


May Our Bodies Remain

by LikeSatellites



Category: K-pop, VIXX
Genre: Character Turned Into a Ghost, LR beautiful liar au, M/M, blood warning, but happy end, hakyeon is a star, hongbin is a temple baby, jaehwan is an angel, sanghyuk is annoying, someone on twitter called this ghost fucker au, taekwoon doesn't believe in ghosts, there is death in this fic obviously bc it is about a ghost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2018-11-13 03:15:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11175846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LikeSatellites/pseuds/LikeSatellites
Summary: “What are you going to do if someone moves in?” Jaehwan whines, grabbing Wonshik by the wrist and waggling his arm around.“I’ll just scare them all away, obviously; I’m a fucking ghost,” Wonshik says, rolling his eyes. “Who would be stupid enough to move into a fucking haunted apartment?”aka Wonshik is dead but can't move on until he finds his murderer so he returns to the place he was murderedwhich is Taekwoon's new apartment.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: sorry for starting a new fic when I haven't updated Undoing or finished AYM but I've had this idea haunting (lol) me for centuries since Beautiful Liar, so here we are. Lmao I can't believe I'm not writing Neo who am I???  
> Please comment and kudo, and I'll try to be good about updating this often.  
> Also, I've realized I talk about hardwood floors so much in my fics and I just don't know why  
> Yes I do I love HGTV  
> (just created a twitter, so if you all want to connect, find me @likesatellitez (not joking))
> 
> Also, my dear twitter pal modify618 made a beautiful poster for this stupid fic, and I can't believe it, so everyone please admire it below and on my twitter

[](https://ibb.co/kYK3Hv)

“I’m telling you; this is a shit idea.”

Jaehwan drops down to sit on the curb beside Wonshik, the two of them staring up at the three story brick apartment complex. The old building makes Wonshik feel nostalgic, which is silly because there is no need for nostalgia when you are entirely built of memories. 

“I don’t have a choice, Jae,” Wonshik says, sighing and rubbing the back of his neck. “This is where I need to be if I want to find out what happened.”

“You were fine when you were wandering the cosmic void with me, remember?” Jaehwan whines, dropping a hand onto Wonshik’s thigh, his nose pressing at Wonshik’s shoulder. “We can just roam around the void for all eternity, and everything will be fine.” 

“You can’t stay in there any longer than I can,” Wonshik replies gruffly, rising to his feet and arching his back in a stretch. 

Not that his ligaments and joints ever ached. Nothing ever made him ache. 

“I could work something out. I’m sure someone could cover my shift and--”

“Jae, you know I need this. I need to know,” Wonshik says, jaw tight and voice resigned. 

“You’re going to be miserable,” Jaehwan reminds him, shaking his soft auburn hair from his forehead.

“Just visit me sometimes, when you aren’t breaking all the cosmic rules in the book, okay?” Wonshik pats Jaehwan on the head, and Jaehwan responds by knocking his forehead up into Wonshik’s hand for more pets. 

“I only break one, mostly,” Jaehwan replies, wrinkling his nose.

“The worst one.” 

“What are you going to do if someone moves in?” Jaehwan whines, grabbing Wonshik by the wrist and waggling his arm around. 

“I’ll just scare them all away, obviously; I’m a fucking ghost,” Wonshik says, rolling his eyes. “Who would be stupid enough to move into a fucking haunted apartment?”

 

SIX MONTHS LATER:

“So, as you can see, it’s real hardwood floors. Completely authentic pinewood. Hardly a scratch. Started at $1500 a month, but the building’s owners are being very generous and would like to offer it to you for just $650.”

Sanghyuk, face pale, lips dropped open, appalled, turns to Taekwoon and frantically shakes his head. “I agreed to come with you to have a laugh, Jung Taekwoon, but this has gone too far.” He turns to the real estate woman, Gong Something, tall, leggy, with a soft bob around her gaunt face, and he points an accusatory finger at her angular face. “You should be ashamed. How dare you try to trick this sweet man into going for this piece of sh--”

“I’ll take it.”

Sanghyuk wheels back around, spitting fury, his eyes like weeping saucers. “Taek, no! Don’t you know...don’t you know someone was  _ murdered _ here? This place is more haunted than fucking Gonjiam Psychiatric, do you hear me? I won’t allow it. It’s simply out of the qu--”

“I’ll take it,” Taekwoon says, pulling out his thin leather wallet to write a check. 

The Gong woman gives Sanghyuk a triumphant smirk and leans in to Taekwoon. “Oh, you’re going to be so happy here. It’s just lovely. Great view of the park. Right by the subway. Nice deli across the street.” She grabs the freshly-written check from Taekwoon’s pale fingers and folds it up, slipping it into her pocket as she heads for the door. “Non-refundable deposit, by the way, wonderful doing business with you. The key is on the kitchen counter.” 

The door slams shut.

Sanghyuk gurgles, a miserable simpering sound coming from deep in his belly. 

“Shut up, Sanghyuk. It’ll be fine. I don’t believe in ghosts anyhow,” Taekwoon says, slapping Sanghyuk on the shoulder. “It’s the cheapest apartment in the area, and I’m so close to my office.”

“Just because you don’t believe,” Sanghyuk burbles unhappily, “doesn’t mean they won’t fucking kill you or sink into your skin and possess your body--oh God, what if they’re already inside you; I’m calling Hongbin’s grandma to see if she can leave the temple to come cleanse you.” He begins shaking Taekwoon by the shoulders, leaning in close and boring holes in Taekwoon’s eyes with his own. “Hello?” he shouts. “If you are inside my friend, ghost scum, come out, or I’ll get a powerful grandma to send you away by force!”

“Threatening the ghost with an old woman,” Taekwoon grumbles, shaking his head wearily. “Great plan.”  

“One of us has to protect you,” Sanghyuk groans, rubbing aggressively at his face. “I’m calling Hongbin. I’m getting someone here to cleanse this place of evil spirits.”

“What if the spirits aren’t evil?” Taekwoon argues, peering into his new cabinets--they could use some new fixtures, but otherwise they are quite nice--to check for dust. He’s perplexed to find them still full of dry goods, cans, some flour, sugar, and spices. 

Sanghyuk moves behind Taekwoon, screeching when he sees the full cabinets. “See? The ghost chased them out, or he killed them; they didn’t even have time to clean up!”

“He didn’t kill them. And how do you know it’s a male ghost? Do ghosts even have genders? I thought most ghosts were just blobs of celestial goo?” 

Behind Sanghyuk, one of the pipes beneath the sink seems to squeak, or maybe croak--it makes a sort of chuckling noise. 

Sanghyuk shrieks and points a shaking finger at the cabinet beneath the sink. “It’s in there.”

“It’s just old pipes, Hyuk. This building was first built in like 1870 something. They give everything new cabinets and electronics to make it seem like they were renovated, but in reality, everything is—”

There’s a soft popping sound and then water begins streaming from the faucet.

“Haunted! Everything is  _ haunted _ , hyung. I’m calling Hongbin right fucking now.”

Hongbin shows up in his temple garb, wearing thick robes, his wavy hair pinned back from his face with a thick tortoise-shell clip. He has a burlap sack over his shoulder, that he drops with a loud clatter onto Taekwoon’s floor.

“Hey! Those are original hardwoods!”

“Where is it?” Hongbin asks, untying the top of the knapsack and pulling out a baggie of fresh sage.

“It was under there, hyung,” Sanghyuk whimpers, grabbing the back of Hongbin’s robes and following him to the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink.

Hongbin pulls a few bundled sage leaves from the baggie and holds them aloft. “I’m going to free you from this realm,” he says, voice calm, though Sanghyuk is shaking his shoulders from the weight of his terrified clinging, Sanghyuk’s fingers like hooked claws over Hongbin’s back.

Taekwoon, meanwhile, is pulling an abandoned pot from one of the cabinets and filling it with water. “Should I make three ramen packets or four? You know, one for me, one for Hongbin, one for Hyukkie, and one for the ghost?”

“You think this is funny now, hyung,” Sanghyuk mutters, as Hongbin lights the sage leaves on fire with a little Bic lighter and begins waving the thickly scented smoke around in the air. “Just wait until you wake up in the middle of the night with a ghost in your bed.”

Taekwoon turns on the stove burner and grabs four packets of ramen. He had been joking, but for some reason he feels like he wants to make four packets.

Hongbin begins murmuring gently in a language that Taekwoon doesn’t understand as the water on the stove bubbles at the edges of the pot.

“You want it spicy?” Taekwoon calls out over the sounds of Hongbin’s now-near-shouting chants.

“No thank you!”

Taekwoon dumps all four spice packets in the pot. He looks down at his hands, briefly alarmed, before deciding his hand must’ve just slipped. Four times.

He quickly stirs the pot with a very new-looking wooden spoon he found in a drawer. The people who lived here previously really must’ve left in a hurry. Well, all the better for Taekwoon, who doesn’t believe in ghosts but definitely does believe in the glory of free things.

Hongbin starts pacing around the flat, which doesn’t take long--the place is maybe 500 square feet--burning the sage in one hand, waving a little lantern in the other, and murmuring. 

“Why is it here, do you think?” Sanghyuk hisses, waving his hands around to spread the musky smoke into every crevice of the flat. 

Hongbin shuts his eyes and stands in the center of the room, as Sanghyuk takes the burning sage bundle from him and skips around the apartment frantically to keep the smoke moving. 

“The energy feels male,” Hongbin says softly, taking in deep breaths through his nose. 

“Why--is it sexy?” Taekwoon chirps, and Hongbin grabs and throws a clove of garlic from his pocket at Taekwoon’s back. 

“Because they’re rare. Gwishins are usually female. Unmarried females. Virgins, often.”

“Oh, Taek, maybe you have a nice virgin lady ghost--”

“He just said the energy felt male, you dweebus,” Taekwoon calls back, taking the heavy, wide pot of ramen off the heat. There’s no table in the apartment yet, so he just drops down into a squat and starts eating with a plastic fork from the pot on the ground. “When you two are done pretending to hunt ghosts, the ramen is ready.”

Hongbin takes another deep breath and, in an unrecognizable gruff voice replies, “You are right there is no ghost and I am really craving some spicy ramen.”

Sanghyuk stops in place, the sage fire goes out in his hand in a tiny puff of smoke, and then he begins shrieking again. 

Hongbin, as if waking from the briefest of dreams, blinks quickly and then glances around. “What happened?”

Taekwoon, a forkful of noodles held up to his lips, sighs onto the steamy swirl of carbohydrates and shakes his head. “Funny joke, Bean.”

Hongbin shrugs, squats down beside Taekwoon, slurps some hot noodles into his mouth, and squeaks, “It’s so fucking spicy, what the fuck, Taekwoon?”

Sanghyuk, waving the crispy burnt sage leaves around, cries, “The ghost wanted spicy noodles! It just said so! Oh, God, Taekwoon, what do we do?”

Taekwoon continues shoveling noodles into his mouth, despite how his tongue and gums have gone numb from the spice. He fans air into his mouth with a waggling hand and mutters, “It’s nonrefundable.”

He moves in the next day, and honestly, he’s pretty proud of how the place looks. He could finally bring that inherited oak dining table out of storage, along with the mismatched wicker and wood dining chairs he found at a flea market years ago. 

His bedroom is so much larger than at his old place, despite the apartment not being that much larger on the whole. His bed frame fits neatly against the wall beneath two large open windows, and he can even fit his long dark wood dresser against the other wall. And, now that he has no roommates, he can sleep without clothes on, with the windows open to let in a slight breeze on his bare skin.

Sanghyuk and Hongbin have yet to visit again, which Taekwoon isn’t mad at. He prefers the place being so quiet. He can put on his Trey Songz albums and dust the cabinets in peace. 

Sanghyuk does call to check in everyday. To make sure Taekwoon hasn’t been smothered by the preternatural ghostly aura. 

Taekwoon’s office, where he provides monotonous and often incorrect IT assistance, is right around the corner, and he can’t beat that as far as convenience goes. Everything seems fine. Great, even. 

One night after work, about four days after moving in, Taekwoon gets into his apartment and finds all the cabinets open. He did have the windows open, so, he thinks, perhaps the wind or maybe some birds came in? Stranger things have happened, surely. 

A few weeks go by, and Taekwoon has to admit, the apartment is definitely strange. He has reasoned with himself over and over than he’s probably just working too hard (how many times can he explain that the best way to fix a frozen browser is to slam your hands onto the keyboard over and over?) and maybe hallucinating. And one night he did take some cold medicine and find some things floating, but that is why conspiracy theorists think cold medicine is satan’s juice, right? Or maybe he had just breached the matrix? 

Regardless, nonrefundable, and it isn’t like anything has harmed Taekwoon in any way. It’s just been strange. 

He jumps into the shower one night after work--with its blessed hard water pressure--lathering his body with amber woods scented body wash that he’d found on clearance at the market (and he secretly loves). 

After a few moments of blissful warmth, the water goes cold. 

Swearing softly to himself, Taekwoon plays with the temperature dial for a few seconds before huffing and giving up. He yanks the shower curtain aside, soap suds still clinging to his pale chest and tanned forearms, his hair damp and hanging loosely in front of his eyes, and he screams.

 

Wonshik hadn’t found it hard to scare away the other tenants. 

They were naturally superstitious. An old couple who believed their lost son was haunting them for leaving him with so much student loan debt left after only two weeks. Wonshik was glad for that. He once saw them going at it in the kitchen, and he wished he still had a gag reflex. 

The young woman who moved in next thought she had gone mad from studying for law school so intently, and she dropped out of school to pursue dance. She lasted a little over five months. 

And then Taekwoon. 

Taekwoon with his  _ ghosts aren’t real _ and his  _ sometimes things fall out of thin air for no reason _ and his  _ I don’t wear clothes to sleep because I live alone and of course there are no ghosts living here that could be trying not to see a naked man every night _ . 

Although, Wonshik admits, Taekwoon is a sight to see. He has these soft waves in his black hair that fan over his high cheekbones and soft cheeks, and his skin is so smooth. His body is like five different shades of skin at once. His face tan, his knees even tanner, his forearms lightly dusted with tan, his chest and...lower bits...pale. Wonshik, he admits, did once run his fingers down the notches in Taekwoon’s spine when he bent over, shirtless, to grab a t-shirt from the dresser drawer. Taekwoon had almost purred in this sweet soft breathy puff of air. Of course, he couldn’t feel much. Wonshik wasn’t really touching him.

God, Taekwoon makes Wonshik feel like a fucking freak for knowing what his tiddly bits look like. Not only that, but knowing what they look like in the light of the sun versus when the sun is setting, and Taekwoon is getting into bed like an old fucking man and stripping himself bare by the orange red light of the open window. 

Wonshik shouldn’t care about jangly bits anymore anyhow. He’s been fucking dead for almost a year now, and the only thing he needs to care about is finding his murderer. Finding whoever made him unable to cross over. Jaehwan said the best way to find the person responsible was to wait at the scene of the crime. They always return to the scene of the crime. Jaehwan’s entire job was to help lost assholes like Wonshik cross over, so he would know. 

But maybe Wonshik missed them, the murderer, that is. Maybe they came back while he was out in otherworldly purgatory, being told he had to turn back. Had to hover on earth like a blob of ethereal goo until he found the reason his soul felt the need to remain. 

At first, he really was just a wisp of goo. Jaehwan had laughed at him so hard (these loud bellowing laughs too) when Jaehwan first found him on earth, Wonshik just a little cloud of mist. And then he was mist with eyes, which was even worse. Jaehwan nearly collapsed with laughter. And then he had these little stump arms, like a baby doll’s. Just reaching out of the mist cloud, waggling his teeny ghost fingers. 

And then he finally materialized. Well, as much as someone who is non-corporeal can materialize. Though, as Jaehwan warned, the longer he stayed on the earthly plane, the more corporeal he would seem. He could lift things, but no one could see him. The more corporeal he became, the less he would know himself. The less he would remember his mission to find his killer. 

Wonshik had wondered why that could be bad. Wouldn’t it be like living again?  _ No,  _ Jaehwan warned,  _ you would lose all humanity. That’s how demons are made.  _

Wonshik wishes the apartment could have just been declared condemned. He wishes they had realized it was haunted and unsellable and left him to linger alone until his killer returned like Jaehwan promised they would. 

It has already been months. Jaehwan hadn’t given a time limit, but Wonshik knows that time moves differently on earth than it does elsewhere. It feels heavier. In purgatory, he felt the irrelevance of time. Things just moved. Peacefully, unrushed. 

On earth, there is so much less balance. Everything is harsh, crooked, weighted. 

Wonshik just wants to cross over. He just wants this all to be over. 

And beneath that. 

Wonshik just wants to find the bastard who ruined everything. Somehow make them pay. Reach inside their skin and twist their intestines into a pretzel or maybe make a bow around their spine and tie it so tightly that their body bends and never rights itself again. 

Taekwoon is in the shower now, and Wonshik remembers he’s supposed to be haunting him. It’s not supposed to be this hard, Wonshik thinks. Haunting someone. Taekwoon should have sprinted the second he came home and found his desk lamp floating in midair. He should’ve bolted when the dining chairs were upside down on his ceiling. He should have at least screamed. 

Wonshik reaches into the pipes in the wall and twists the knob hard to the right. The water in Taekwoon’s shower goes icy in an instant. 

“Fucking hell,” Wonshik hears Taekwoon murmur to himself. Wonshik kind of really hates how sweet and angelic Taekwoon’s voice is. He hates how cute Taekwoon’s swearing sounds in the steamy air of the little bathroom.

Taekwoon steps out over the edge of the tub-shower and wipes at some soap bubbles clinging to his cheek. And then he’s looking up with those sharp feline eyes. And then they’re meeting Wonshik’s, which is impossible. 

Because Wonshik is dead. 

And Wonshik is a fucking ghost.

And Taekwoon is human. 

But Taekwoon’s eyes are wide and horrified and his pretty pink little lips are parting as he screams. 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Welcome back everyone. I have no idea how long this fic will be, but I'm going to do my best to update it. The Undoing is on hiatus right now until my brain can get back into angst mode. Also AYM will have it's final chapter posted hopefully in the next week or so! If you aren't already, please follow me on twitter @likesatellitez and we can chat fics or vixx or anything else! I often shitpost about sex a lot so!!!

When Wonshik found Jaehwan, he was newly dead. In that phase, you know, where you don’t quite believe you’re dead. 

“You’re dead,” Jaehwan had said, reaching out with a cute pale hand to brush Wonshik’s bleached hair back from his face. 

Wonshik, seeing the way Jaehwan’s skin radiated light like it was studded with millions and millions of little gems, felt a bit out of sorts. 

“Are you...dead?” he asked, voice gruff and concerned. It certainly didn’t look like Seoul, what with the thin foggy mist of glowing white hovering around him in the air--was this air?--and the fact that Wonshik wasn’t sure there was any horizon or sun or land at all. It just...was. 

Jaehwan shook his head. “Never alive,” he said. 

Wonshik accepted it. When you see a man who glows from his every pore, whose body seems to have been crafted as the epitome of soft, clean, shimmering, you don’t doubt that he was never alive. 

“What do I do now?” Wonshik asked, resisting the urge to glance around. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what else was there. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know there was nothing.

Jaehwan pursed his lips and puffed his pillowy cheeks. “You have all the time.”

“In the world?”

Jaehwan gestured around him in a shrug, and Wonshik again resisted the urge to follow the motion with his eyes. To see where exactly, the fuck, he currently resided. 

“You have all the time that there is. Of time.”

 

 

Taekwoon never suspected he might have an allergy medicine problem. He does tend to pop the little orange pills whenever his nose starts dripping phlegm or when his temples begin to ache in that familiar sinus pressurey way they do in springtime. But he never goes too far over the recommended dose. And he can’t help but drink coffee while taking them. And he’s had a few drinks on them before and felt much tipsier than normal, but he has never considered that they might be deteriorating his mental capacity.

But now, glancing into his bathroom mirror, Taekwoon can’t help but think, shit, Jung Taekwoon, you’ve fucked up big time.

Because there is a man in his mirror. And, no, that man isn’t Taekwoon.

This man is glowing at the edges, faintly, and he has this strangely emo-reminiscent bleached blond spiked hair like a cartoon character, and his eyes are dark and hollow and  _ scared _ . 

Why is the imaginary man in Taekwoon’s mirror scared, he wonders. Perhaps Taekwoon’s subconscious knows that it should not have conjured this hallucination. It knows that Taekwoon is a rational man, a man who provides often completely falsified technical assistance for a living, a man who believes that what you see and touch and smell and taste is all that there is in this dark world.

This man in the mirror must realize he is not real. He is not meant to exist in Taekwoon’s bathroom, with its fancy black and white baroque wallpaper and navy blue shag shower mat.

And then the man’s eyes are dipping down, tracing the line of Taekwoon’s dripping wet naked body, and Taekwoon feels the need to grab his fluffy mint green towel and wrap it around his waist, even though this spectre is nothing but his own subconscious mind’s conjuring to remind him to obey medicinal serving sizes from now on.

“Okay, okay! I won’t abuse the Sudafed anymore! I won’t! Go, be gone!” Taekwoon yells, waving at the spectre to usher it away. “I’ll be good!”

The spectre blinks a few times, which is strange—why should a hallucination need to blink? Taekwoon supposes his subconscious must be really intelligent to make its conjuration so lifelike. So realistic. It even has eyelids! It blinks! 

“Uh,” the spectre replies.

Well, isn’t that cute. It needs a moment to gather its thoughts. 

“You can see me?” it burbles, voice rough but kind and almost comforting. Taekwoon wouldn’t mind this spectre reading some Murakami to him at night until he falls asleep.

Oh, come off it, Jung Taekwoon. It isn’t real. 

“Of course I can see you,” Taekwoon replies, scoffing. “You are me. You’re in my brain. I don’t know why I’ve made you so strangely handsome in a 2006 boyband I would masturbate to sort of way, but the mind is impossible to know entirely, right?” Taekwoon laughs, voice crackling with near-hysteria.

“Oh,” the spectre says, rubbing at his sallow cheek with a large hand. “I’m only in the mirror, then?”

Taekwoon gestures to the glass. “So far as I see, yes.”

“You aren’t scared of me?” 

Taekwoon laughs again, shaking another matching green towel through his damp dark waves to dry them. “Why would I be? You’re imaginary. I took three Sudafed pills and then drank a big pot of coffee, and my brain is telling me to chill out. Obviously.” 

The spectre pops its lips and the sound of the soft pop fills the bathroom. How strange indeed.

“My name is Wonshik,” the spectre says.

“You don’t have a name,” Taekwoon replies, dropping his towel onto the drying rack. “You’re in my brain.”

“My name is Kim Wonshik. I’m 25. I’m dead.”

Taekwoon’s hands grab at the fabric around his waist, feeling the slightly shredded edges of the towel between his fingers. He refuses to look back up at the mirror.

“Why would there be a dead man in my mirror?” Taekwoon taunts, shaking his head, his fringe hanging loose and wet over his eyes.

“I’m not in your mirror,” Wonshik, the hallucination, says, voice gentle and calming, and Taekwoon again wishes he could record this voice as a book on tape. “I’m behind you.” 

Taekwoon’s spine twitches, all the hairs from the nape of his neck down to his bare ass standing on end, but he once again refuses to glance at the mirror. “If you’re behind me, why don’t you hand me my hai—”

The wooden brush levitates up from his shelf and lands in his open palm.

Taekwoon clenches his fist around the pale wood handle and starts shaking.

“If you’re behind me, why don’t you—”

Taekwoon feels the lightest brush of air between his shoulder blades, like the delicate mapping of fingertips along his back, and he screams again.

Hastily, he tucks his wet towel under the edges of his mirror and lets it hang down over the reflective surface.

“Not in  _ my  _ non-refundable, perfectly-located apartment!”

 

 

Wonshik has to admit, Taekwoon is kind of cute when he isn’t being a complete fool. As much as Wonshik doesn’t mind Taekwoon, he really does think the guy must be completely daft if he refuses to leave a haunted apartment. He’d seen Wonshik  _ in-the-ghostly-flesh _ , and he still refuses to budge.

He’s got guts, that’s for sure. 

Two days later, that monk boy is back, helping Taekwoon cover all the reflective surfaces in the flat. The monk boy is dressed in street clothes this time, just a pair of tight lightwash jeans and a clean pale orange t-shirt.

Wonshik follows them around, tugging on the monk boy’s curly ponytail and hissing curse words into his little pale ear. The boy doesn’t flinch, but his brows do come together in a grimace. He’s a pretty monk, Wonshik decides. Honestly too pretty to be a monk, but then again, Taekwoon is also much too pretty to be so life-threateningly stupid.

“His energy doesn’t feel malicious,” the monk boy says, hand on Taekwoon’s shoulder. 

“You’re wrong,” Wonshik replies, but he’s sure it sounds like just a little puff of air against the monk boy’s ear. “I’m incredibly malicious. I’m the most malicious. Just full to the brim with fucking malice.”

“But Taekwoon, you really ought to move. Even if he isn’t malicious, the fact that he’s haunting this space means something. It has a sticky dark energy. It drew him here for a reason.”

“Hongbin, I can’t. I like it here. I like this apartment. It’s cheap, and I have so much space, and I  _ don’t believe in ghosts _ ,” Taekwoon hisses, though he does spare a glance around the living room, searching for a glimpse of Wonshik in the glint of the plastic toaster or perhaps on the refrigerator door.

“I’m not sure what to do for you, Taek,” Hongbin says, voice sincere and apologetic. 

He moves as if to head for the door, thank the celestial bodies, but then Taekwoon reaches out and grabs Hongbin’s wrist. “Stay, please,” he says, in this sweet melodic voice. 

Hongbin flicks his gaze down to Taekwoon’s hand wrapped around his thin wrist and sighs. “My grandma will kill me. We have to prepare the temple for the comi—”

“Please,” Taekwoon breathes, tugging at Hongbin’s wrist. 

Wonshik chokes, though he has no reason to breathe or swallow. Is this how Taekwoon treats his friends? The same Taekwoon who growled obscenities at the television when soccer was on? 

“Oh, Taek,” Hongbin sighs again, more resigned this time, and he lets himself be pulled into Taekwoon’s space, wrapping his short arms around Taekwoon’s narrow waist, tucking his head into the side of Taekwoon’s neck. “You want me to call Hyuk?”

Taekwoon shakes his head, forehead pressed to Hongbin’s shoulder.

“You want to order sushi and watch a romantic comedy we’ve both already seen?” Hongbin murmurs kindly, and Taekwoon nods. 

Wonshik didn’t think Taekwoon had it in him to be so fragile, so vulnerable. 

“Okay, go get in your sweats, and I’ll order you the sp—” 

“—icy salmon and crab.” 

“Yes, Taekwoon, I know,” Hongbin chuckles, swatting at Taekwoon’s butt to push him towards his bedroom. 

When Taekwoon disappears behind the bedroom door, Wonshik turns to Hongbin and narrows his eyes. Who is this magical monk creature who can tame the obstinate Taekwoon? The Taekwoon Wonshik has observed chasing a single fruit fly around the apartment until he could cup it in his wrinkled palms and release it outside? The Taekwoon Wonshik has seen wrestling into a pair of clearly too-small skinny jeans for over an hour until he tied the zipper to the button with a ripped rubber band? 

Hongbin’s eyes land on the exact spot where Wonshik stands. Wonshik feels his skin prickle, though it must be an illusion. 

“I don’t know why you’re here,” Hongbin spits, face contorting in barely contained fury, the promise of complete and utter agony, “but if you lay a creepy ghost hand on my friend, I will trap you in a glass bottle and make sure no one ever releases you out into the world until the sun inevitably swallows the earth, and even then, I will make sure you float aimlessly alone forever more in space.” 

Wonshik promptly poofs up to the ceiling over the television and makes himself a small ball of ghostly energy, like a tiny, unnoticeable cobweb. 

A few minutes later, Taekwoon returns with only a pair of low-riding gray sweatpants on and a thin black tanktop. His shoulders are bony and sharp, and Wonshik wonders if Taekwoon once held much more weight on his thin frame. Wonshik wonders what Taekwoon would look like with soft flesh at his chest and hips and thighs. 

Hongbin waves a little empty DVD box around. “I hope it’s okay I already put the movie in. I figured you would want this one anyhow.”

The menu screen flashes, sweet English 80s music coming from Taekwoon’s tiny speakers.

“Nothing cheers me up like this strange old American dance film,” Taekwoon says, dropping onto the couch and making himself small against the armrest.

“ _ Dirty Dancing _ is more than that, Taekwoon,” Hongbin says, dropping down beside Taekwoon and hefting Taekwoon’s long legs up onto his lap. Taekwoon shifts back against the cushions and allows himself to relax. Wonshik again wonders what mystical monk powers this Hongbin has.

“It is the first movie we made out to,” Taekwoon murmurs, and it is so quiet that even Wonshik’s ghostly ears almost miss it. He suddenly wishes he had the ability to gasp, so he could act like a live studio audience and provide the background reaction noise.

“We were like fourteen, Taekwoon,” Hongbin chuckles, pausing the DVD as the doorbell rings. Hongbin rushes to the door to fetch the delivery, returning with a brown paper bag that he drops down onto Taekwoon’s glass coffee table. The table that has been draped with a hideous yellow paisley sheet to keep its reflective surface covered.

“Why do ghosts appear in mirrors?” Taekwoon mutters, tearing open the stapled top of the brown paper bag and pulling free the plastic containers of sushi.

“I’m not sure why. I just know that they do. They can get trapped in them, so I hear. I think the most common explanation is that mirrors are these portals between worlds. It isn’t based on much in the way of reason, which is something I know you are obsessed with,” at this, Taekwoon frowns, lips pursed, “but clearly reason doesn’t apply to some things.”

“A portal, huh,” Taekwoon repeats, stuffing rolls of sushi into his cheeks and chewing thoughtfully. “Could he…materialize?”

Hongbin shrugs. “I didn’t go to mythical monk school, Taekwoon. I just grew up in a temple. I can’t tell you much. I told you to move, but if you refuse, maybe you should just…ignore him?”

“Ignore it?”

“Him.”

“Ignoring it might be reasonable now that everything is covered, but it still likes to fuck around and levitate shit. Sometimes I can almost feel it...looking at me,” Taekwoon whispers.

“Maybe he thinks you’re cute,” Hongbin teases, punching Taekwoon lightly on the shoulder.

Wonshik snorts and howls, “He wishes!” Even though he has admitted to himself multiple times that Taekwoon is obviously very cute. In a delicate, pretty-boy kind of way. 

“If he wants me to leave,” Taekwoon says, sipping daintily at his Chilsung cider, “he is going to be waiting for a long,  _ long _ time. And he is going to have to deal with me.”

“Yeah?” Hongbin laughs, unwinding his ponytail from the base of his skull and releasing his waves. 

Taekwoon grabs the front of Hongbin’s shirt and lifts himself onto Hongbin’s lap.

This is when Wonshik really wishes he could make a racket. 

Taekwoon hooks his fingers into Hongbin’s curls and grips, tugging Hongbin’s head up so their lips meet. “Yeah,” he breathes.

And then he makes this sound, this needy, greedy whining sound from the pit of his belly, and Wonshik can almost feel it in his core somehow. Such a raw sound, somehow traversing all the realms of time and space and reaching Wonshik in his little haunted web on the ceiling. 

Hongbin lifts the hem of Taekwoon’s tanktop and skims his hands up Taekwoon’s hips to his waist to his shoulders, and Taekwoon mewls into his mouth. 

Wonshik watches Taekwoon rocking his slender hips down to meet Hongbin’s, which are lifted up ever-so-slightly to meet Taekwoon’s desperate motions. 

Something in Wonshik’s gut twinges in a way it hasn’t since he’s been dead. Something familiar and strange and-- 

He poofs to the bedroom, unable to watch anymore. 

Eventually, Wonshik hears the credits rolling and the front door shutting quietly. He supposes Hongbin isn’t staying the night. Strange, considering how prettily Taekwoon had begged. 

Taekwoon slips into his bedroom and under his heavy down comforter, which is entirely unnecessary considering it’s springtime. Wonshik watches Taekwoon shift around under the blankets for a moment and then his sweatpants are dropping in a gray pile beside the bed. Wonshik tries to make himself as small as possible in the corner of the room. 

Taekwoon’s head drops back against the white cotton pillowcase, black waves spread out behind him, and his lips part. Wonshik watches as he brings his palm to his lips and runs the flat of his tongue over his skin until it’s slick before bringing his hand back under the covers. Wonshik knows he should leave. He should go to the living room or kitchen or bathroom or anywhere, but he feels trapped. For some reason, Wonshik feels strangely smug as well, thinking maybe that monk boy hadn’t finished the job. 

Taekwoon breathes heavily, hips stuttering up under the blankets, and Wonshik could cry at how lovely he looks and how desperately he wishes he could move. Wonshik pushes against the air around him, seeking an invisible or imaginary force, and he groans.

Taekwoon’s hand stops moving below the blankets. He sits up, gathering the blankets around himself, and glances around. 

“Stop...stop watching me,” he hisses into the dark of the room. 

Wonshik, now finally able to move, sinks down to the floor and lets himself materialize again. Taekwoon is nervously turning his head from side to side, seeking any clues as to Wonshik’s location in his bedroom. 

Wonshik wishes he could speak again. He wishes he could apologize and tell Taekwoon he isn’t some pervert, but then again, what would be the point? Maybe Taekwoon should believe he’s a pervert so that he’ll finally leave. 

Wonshik sits on the edge of Taekwoon’s bed, and the bed dips ever so slightly under his weight. Taekwoon squeaks, but he doesn’t move away. 

“What do you want?” he whispers.

“I want to move on,” he says, but Taekwoon doesn’t hear him. “I want to go somewhere people can hear me and see me, and I want to know why I’m fucking dead.”

Taekwoon lays back against the pillows again, eyelids fluttering shut, and he pulls the covers up over his head. “I want you to leave me alone.”

Wonshik sighs and poofs to the living room. 

Jaehwan is on Taekwoon’s couch, flipping through the channels, his skin glowing brightly in the dark room. He stops on the news, nodding his head at the screen. 

“That’s you,” he says.

Wonshik drops down next to him on Taekwoon’s couch and watches the silent television running with subtitles. 

THE CASE OF THE MURDERED MAN, REFERRED TO BY POLICE AS HONG GILDONG, WHO WAS BRUTALLY STABBED TO DEATH IN HIS MAPO-GU APARTMENT IS STILL WITHOUT SUSPECTS. POLICE SAY THE MURDER WEAPON HAS YET TO BE DISCOVERED AND THEY BELIEVE IT COULD BE THE KEY TO FINALLY FINDING THE SUSPECT. 

Jaehwan shuts the television off and turns to Wonshik. “You know what this means, don’t you?” 

Wonshik stares at the black screen of the powered off tv. “It means I’m fucking trapped here forever to become a damn demon because the police can’t find a fucking clue?”

Jaehwan shakes his head and spreads his arms out. “It means your murder weapon must be somewhere nearby.”

Wonshik grabs Jaehwan by the cheeks and shakes him. “Jaehwan, you big dumb angelic dope, you’re a genius.”

Jaehwan wrinkles his nose and begins protesting, “If I’m a dope, how am I also a--”

“They’re going to come back. Maybe they’ve already been back but have been unable to find their stashed weapon. Oh, this is fucking fantastic, Jaehwan, I’m going to find this fucker and get off this miserable plane.”

Jaehwan slides his tongue nervously over his bottom lip and tips his head to the side. 

“Wait, what’s this? What’s this expression for? I thought this was good, Jae. It’s good, right?”

Jaehwan nods hesitantly and then shifts his gaze over to Taekwoon’s bedroom door. 

“Oh,  _ fuck _ ,” Wonshik hisses through gritted teeth. 

“I mean, not to say that Taekwoon is going to get  _ murdered _ or anything,” Jaehwan says. “But you know what they say: once a murderer, always a murderer? Or is it something about being in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

Wonshik drops his head back against the couch, covers his face, and groans. “This pretty idiot is going to get murdered because he won’t leave a haunted apartment. Because it is nonrefundable.”

“And centrally located.”

Wonshik groans again. 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: can you believe how good I'm being about updating?   
> omg I'm joking but also in all honesty I am going to try to update this semi-regularly if I can. I hope you guys are enjoying this mess that I decided to write out of nowhere because I have been feeling Kim Wonshik so hard lately and it is a struggle. Forgive me, Cha Hakyeon. 
> 
> Anyhow, thank you to all who have commented and kudoed and I hope you enjoy/will continue commenting/kudoing!! Add me on twitter, friends!! @likesatellitez

“Hi, thank you for calling TT&T Wireless, this is Jung Taekwoon speaking, how can I help you?” 

“Hey, TT&T Wireless Jung Taekwoon, this is a longtime customer, first-time caller, who is feeling  _ quite _ TT, if you know what I mean.”

Taekwoon sighs, flipping his headset to mute as he rambles off his standard reply: “Thanks for calling, devoted customer. We’re sorry you’re feeling...TT...but have you tried turning the phone on and off? If so, try placing the phone in a bowl of just-barely-set gelatin. If that doesn’t work, try tapping the top of the phone onto the surface of your kitchen table for about as long as it takes you to sing Happy Birthday two times. If your phone is still not working after all of these steps, I would suggest you purchase a new phone from one of our catalogs that you’re still somehow receiving (even after requesting paperless delivery!)--the phones now come in three fun colors: black, gray, and dark gray. Have a good day.”

Taekwoon’s cell buzzes on the table next to him as he shuts off his headset. “Hey, Hyukkie, what’s up?”

“God, Taek, my roommates have been going at it for literal  _ hours _ , and there is nowhere quiet,” Sanghyuk gasps into the phone, and Taekwoon can hear the wind rattling in the speaker of his cellphone. It sounds like he’s running. “What time will you be off work? I need to stay over tonight.”

“I’m off in,” Taekwoon glances at his watch, one of those cartoon plastic watches that comes in cereal boxes--his is Larva, with his big googly cartoon eyes and yellow body--“an hour or so. My spare key is in the planter by the door, though. By the geraniums. You can let yourself in.”

Sanghyuk sighs with gratitude, and Taekwoon can hear the soft beep of the bus pass swipe pad. 

“Maybe you should just talk to Sungjae and Peni--”

“I can’t get a word in, Taek! I went to Peniel’s room to ask him if he knew where the can opener was, and all I heard was ‘uhn, uh, hhhh, ah!’ Do you know what it is like to hear your two friends going at it like damn bunnies in heat, Taek? Do you? I’ll tell you: it. Is. Hell!” Taekwoon can hear Sanghyuk cover the speaker here, and then he hears a muffled, “Sorry for the language, Ma’am.”

“Okay, Hyukkie, okay. I get it.” He wonders briefly what Sanghyuk would think of Taekwoon on his knees on the floor between Hongbin’s spread thighs a couple nights prior. Would he be as horrified to know that Taekwoon had mouthed open kisses over Hongbin’s jeans and palmed needily at his cock like a desperate heathen while “She’s Like the Wind” played in the background on the DVD? Probably. Taekwoon feels shame burning in his chest. But he also remembers the heady scent of Hongbin’s sweaty and the heavy feeling of hot skin on his tongue, and he doesn’t feel so bad. “I have some leftover kimchi fried rice in the fridge, so just heat it up with some fresh kimchi, and I’ll be home soon.”

“Hyung,” Sanghyuk whines.

“You know how to use a damn stove, Han Sanghyuk,” Taekwoon grumbles, rubbing at his temples. “Please.”

“Can I microwave it?”

“If you want to eat mushy rice, then fine,” Taekwoon retorts.

Sanghyuk whines again. “Maybe I do!”

“Okay then.”

“Okay!”

“See you at my apartment, Hyukkie. You, me, and our mushy rice.”

“I hate you!”  _ Click _ .

Taekwoon’s headset beeps, and he reluctantly unmutes it to mutter: “Thanks for calling TT&T Wireless, this is Jung Taekwoon. If your phone is being so mean, so mean, feel free to hit me with that talk, talk.”  _ Mute _ . 

 

Wonshik really misses being able to sleep. Though time is now irrelevant for him, he has to admit that when Taekwoon isn’t home, time does seem to drag a little. Maybe Jaehwan can teach him how to phase himself out of the corporeal plane for a few hours and then poof back when Taekwoon returns. 

Not that Taekwoon ever really interacts with Wonshik when he  _ is  _ home. On occasion, Taekwoon will catch sight of Wonshik in the metal base of a lamp or the reflection of his windows while he cleans them, and he’ll hiss softly, “Be gone, demon.”

And Wonshik thinks maybe Taekwoon can hear him now, even when he doesn’t see him. Sometimes, at least. He saw Taekwoon’s jaw clench once when Wonshik replied, “I’m, uh, not a demon, though.” Then Taekwoon gave a soft  _ tsch _ . 

Wonshik never watched a lot of television when he was alive. But now he wonders if maybe this is why everyone spent so many hours watching, this sense of attachment to characters, to life apart from their own lives. 

Taekwoon is fascinating. In the way he meticulously organizes his spices--he has six different variations of garlic powders, who knew? In the way he always puts his socks on before his pants. In the way he washes his face with two different soaps before swabbing his pale cheeks with two different toners and then myriad other concoctions that leave him looking dewy and somehow even more breathtaking than when he has his BB cream on. 

Or even the way Taekwoon sleeps with his mouth open, sometimes breathing so heavily that Wonshik worries he’s choking or somehow drowning. Sometimes Taekwoon sits up in bed in the middle of the night, still asleep, and just shouts. Wordlessly. Just shouts. Wonshik, hovering in the corner of the room in his paranormal cobweb, never knows when it will come, only that he will inevitably shout back in shock/fear. 

Wonshik wonders what Taekwoon dreams about. Does he dream about average alive human things like money and work and love? Or does he dream about living in a haunted apartment and getting murdered? 

Wonshik knows that he needs Taekwoon to hear him. He needs Taekwoon to hear him or Taekwoon will die. 

A key rattles in the front door, and Wonshik floats over to watch Taekwoon come in as he always does, but it isn’t him. 

It’s that kid, Sanghyuk. Giant, slightly gangly, but also muscular kid who is probably not much of a kid at all. He’s wearing a long gray and black flannel shirt with a pair of loose jeans, and Wonshik notices he’s sweating. Well, that’s what you get for wearing flannel in this weather, eh, dumb kid?

Sanghyuk starts pacing around. And not in the waiting-for-a-late-friend way. In the...stressed about something way. His phone rings. Wonshik floats down to hover over Sanghyuk’s head, to listen. 

“I can’t talk now,” Sanghyuk says, clipped and terse. 

“ _ Later then _ .  _ Are you working? _ ”

“I’ll fucking call you when I have a reason to call you,” Sanghyuk replies before hanging up. 

Well, quite the sassy mouth on this prickly child. 

Sanghyuk sighs and finally remembers to kick his shoes off. Taekwoon would be horrified to know Sanghyuk had paced around his entire living room and kitchen in his weather-inappropriate Timberland boots. The boy is probably suffering from serious swampfoot in those boots. 

Opening the fridge, Sanghyuk peers in and sighs dramatically. 

“What’s with all the sighing,” Wonshik asks, knowing it will be rhetorical. 

“Hyung never has anything good.”

For a moment it feels like Sanghyuk has just replied to him, and Wonshik’s chest is tight. God he misses using his voice to communicate language and receiving it in return from another person. He really used to take that for granted, just running his mouth off and not letting other people reply. 

“Yeah, you should see what he eats for dinner everyday,” Wonshik adds, floating behind Sanghyuk’s shoulder as Sanghyuk pulls out a tupperware of the old kimchi fried rice from two nights ago, along with a little sealed jar of kimchi from Taekwoon’s mom. 

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Sanghyuk says, popping the lid off the rice and dropping it in the microwave with a few pieces of fresher kimchi. He sets it for two minutes. 

Wonshik shrieks. 

Sanghyuk carries on, “Fucking hyung,” as he glances nervously around the apartment, waiting in front of the microwave. “Why couldn’t he just move? There’s a fucking ghost here. Normal people move away from ghosts.”

Wonshik nods in agreement. Normal people do indeed move away from fucking ghosts. “Does your friend...perhaps want to be murdered by spirits?”

Sanghyuk drops his head back against the cabinets beside the microwave. “We have to get him to move.”

Wonshik, hearing the word  _ we _ , is elated. We. We!!! “Yes, thank you!” he cries. “He  _ must _ move, Sanghyuk. He will die here.”

Sanghyuk bites at his bottom lip, tugging at the chapped skin with his front teeth, until the microwave chimes. He tugs open the door, and the steam smells like gochujang and that starchy condensation that forms around rice. Wonshik wishes he could feel hungry again. 

Sanghyuk waves away some of the steam, and pulls out the tub, his free hand ready with a pair of wooden chopsticks from Taekwoon’s drawer. The cabbage, wilted and dripping with pinkish spicy steam, falls from his chopsticks, and Sanghyuk groans. He stabs at the clumps of condensed rice and veggies. 

“Hyung was right.”

Wonshik shakes his head and clicks his tongue. 

Sanghyuk drops the tub back down onto the counter beneath the microwave and flops onto the couch. Wonshik perches on the arm of the couch and stares down at him. For some reason Sanghyuk feels familiar. He has that vibe about him, that approachable, familiar vibe. Despite being a freakish giant baby. 

Wonshik hears the door again, and spins around rapidly, almost embarrassed by how eagerly and unknowingly he’s been waiting for Taekwoon’s return just as much as Sanghyuk has. 

Taekwoon gently shucks off his sneakers and slips into his fuzzy navy house shoes, nose lifted up as he sniffs the air. 

“I see you microwaved the rice,” Taekwoon observes from the smell alone. He finds the abandoned tub of mush and kimchi on the counter and shakes his head wearily. “Why do you hate me? Why do you hate food?”

Sanghyuk lifts his head from the couch and pouts. “I don’t hate you, and I love food! I’m just a bum, hyung, I’m sorry.”

Taekwoon grabs a giant wok from the cabinet above the stove and sets it down with some sesame oil. “Lucky for you, I’m competent.”

Sanghyuk huffs and clambers over to the armrest where Wonshik is perched, dropping his head through Wonshik’s abdomen and crotch so his chin rests on the little ledge. 

Wonshik squeaks and poofs over to the kitchen behind Taekwoon. 

“Hey, uh, Taek,” Sanghyuk calls, eyes trained shyly on the wood floor. “What would I have to do to get you to move?”

Taekwoon presses his lips tightly together to keep from immediately replying, instead concentrating his energy on turning all the rice over in the wok so each kernel can fry equally. 

“I mean it, hyung,” Sanghyuk adds, voice soft and low and almost skittish. 

“Are you scared for me? Is that it?” 

“Scared, yes. Worried, yes. Deeply concerned, definitely. Someone died here, hyung, and now it’s haunted, and who knows if the spirit is malevolent or--”

“He’s not,” Taekwoon cuts in, doling out bits of kimchi throughout the rice. 

“How do you know? Did he speak to you? Did he...say who he is?” 

Taekwoon shuts off the burner and scoops some of the fried rice into little bowls for him and Sanghyuk. Wonshik watches the steam drift up to the ceiling and dissipate, and for a moment he feels the nostalgic rumble of hunger in his gut. Must be psychological. 

“I just know, okay? Everything is fine. I’m not going to be murdered, and the spirit is benevolent or whatever, so just let it go,” Taekwoon mutters, jabbing at his rice with his chopsticks. “I like it here, despite the fact that I can’t masturbate in peace.”

“Gonna pretend you didn’t say that, hyung, but, regardless,” Sanghyuk continues, “you never know when he might change. Maybe he doesn’t start out evil, but under certain circumstances, you know, people--or ghosts--do bad shit.”

“Why are you so concerned for my ghost?” Taekwoon asks around a mouthful of rice. 

Wonshik, now perched on the coffee table, shivers a little at the phrasing:  _ my ghost _ .

“I could care less about your ghost, hyung; I’m worried that he’s gonna possess you or something. Or--or use your body for devious acts,” Sanghyuk croaks, choking on a wad of kimchi. 

“Like what? Masturbating? Can ghosts not masturbate? Is that why he wants to watch? So he can live vicariously?”

“Please stop talking about masturbating, hyung, I’m trying to eat,” Sanghyuk whimpers, biting the end of one of his chopsticks, denting it with his front teeth. 

Wonshik, meanwhile, feels the burning, licking ember of shame at his spine. Does Taekwoon really think Wonshik is so depraved? Sure, he’d started watching for a little bit, but he was going to leave, right? He was on his way out when Taekwoon stopped stroking his pretty cock that one time, okay?

But also Wonshik is dead. The only emotions he really feels are an urge to find his killer and a desire to pass the fuck on into the void. 

Right?

Taekwoon stares through Wonshik at the blank television screen, and Wonshik feels his chest tighten, like his ribs are slowly moving in towards each other, a booby trap for his heart, bound to squish it between the sharp bones. 

Sanghyuk falls asleep on the couch with his big gangly legs scrunched up to fit, so Taekwoon covers him with a little fleece blanket that looks like it was once a cat bed because it’s covered in little furs. Wonshik wonders what happened to Taekwoon’s cat. He’s never seen one. Maybe Taekwoon’s cat is gone, like Wonshik. The thought makes Wonshik’s throat feel scratchy. 

Taekwoon heads into his bedroom, and Wonshik, after giving Taekwoon a moment alone (because Wonshik isn’t a stalkerish monster, you know, he’s a chill monster), follows. 

Taekwoon is curled up in the middle of his bed, still fully dressed, which is completely unlike him. He’s yelled at Hongbin for getting on the bed in his ‘outside clothes’ many,  _ many _ times. 

Wonshik shifts closer, and he watches Taekwoon’s spine stiffen. As if he sensed Wonshik’s arrival. Which would be silly because--

“Go away.” Taekwoon’s voice is hoarse, thick with unshed tears.

Wonshik thinks if he had air to breathe, it would leave his lungs feeling bitter and sharp. 

“I didn’t invite you. I don’t want you here. Go away, please, fuck, what do I do to make you just fucking leave? This is my home, not yours. My home. I like it here. Please, I want this to be my fucking home,” Taekwoon pleads, and his voice is so broken, his words slurring together. 

“I can’t,” Wonshik says, and Taekwoon, as if somehow hearing him, just chokes on a shattered moan. “I would if I could.”

“Please,” Taekwoon begs again, pulling his knees up to his chest as he curls further in on himself on the bed. 

“God, just...fucking  _ hear me _ ,” Wonshik groans, dropping onto the bed beside Taekwoon’s rumpled form. “Please hear me. Please, please, please,” Wonshik continues, “I won’t hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. I want to help,  _ God _ , just let him  _ hear  _ me.”

Taekwoon blinks his eyes open, and Wonshik freezes, not wanting to startle him. Taekwoon stares into space, but his gaze is more focused than other times when Wonshik has been planted directly in his line of sight. He’s squinting almost, with tear tracks high on his lovely cheekbones, and fuck if Wonshik has ever seen anything more stunning in his life  _ and _ un-life. Though he can’t remember his life, so it’s possible he has seen something more stunning, but that is irrelevant at the moment. 

“Taekwoon,” Wonshik says, the name feeling strange but warm on his tongue.

Taekwoon shakes his head, covering his face. 

“Taekwoon,” Wonshik says again, crawling closer to Taekwoon on the bed. 

“No,” Taekwoon croaks, sitting up in alarm, hands held out in front of him to stave off Wonshik’s progress. 

“Please, fuck, just listen to me, if you can,” Wonshik begs, reaching out without thinking, grabbing at Taekwoon’s wrist to move his hands away from his face, and he’s alarmed to find he can feel. Taekwoon’s skin is touching his own skin.

Beneath his fingers, there is Taekwoon’s rapid pulse, soft and faint under the pad of Wonshik’s thumb. 

Taekwoon opens his mouth, as if to scream, but instead the sweetest sounding little gasp comes from behind his lips. 

“You,” he says, and his eyes latch onto Wonshik’s firmly, and Wonshik could swear he felt his heart hammering in his chest. His dead heart. 

“Taekwoon, listen,” Wonshik says, knowing his words are slurring together, but he doesn’t know how long this strange magic will hold, how long Taekwoon will see him or hear him, “I’m not evil. I want to help you. I want to help myself. I’m not going to hurt you, and I won’t watch you masturbate anymore, I mean, not that I  _ did _ , but I mean  _ if I did,  _ it was because, let’s be honest, you’ve got a pretty good thing going, I mean physically. In the physical department,” Wonshik mentally slaps himself, but he doesn’t have time to correct anything, already sensing his fingers loosening their hold on this realm and Taekwoon’s wrist, “I’m going to help you, Taekwoon. I’m going to keep you safe, okay? Someone may come to hurt you, someone is going to come and they may want to hurt you but--”

Taekwoon’s eyes squint again, as if gazing through a thick and heavy fog, and Wonshik feels himself becoming unstuck to this plane again, drifting back into the space between, but he has to continue. “I’m Wonshik, okay? Remember? Wonshik. Call my name in here, and I’ll…”

“Wonshik,” Taekwoon murmurs, and his precious, delicate voice forming Wonshik’s name nearly makes him yelp aloud. 

“Someone is going to come, Taekwoon,” Wonshik says, but he can’t get his mouth to form the words he needs to. Taekwoon still has little tears running down the pale slope of his pillowy cheeks, and Wonshik wants his hands back, he wants to be himself again and not a cloud of paranormal dust floating aimlessly. He wants to memorize the way Taekwoon’s skin feels beneath his own, the heat of him, so alive, so fragile. 

Wonshik feels like he’s dissipating, like he’s dissolving, unable to form thoughts any longer, but he manages one last, “Shit, don’t cry, I’m, Taekwoon, it’s...I’m...Wonshik.”

“Wonshik,” Taekwoon says, rubbing absently at his wrist and staring down at where Wonshik’s fingers had rested, but his gaze is unseeing.

And then Wonshik blacks out. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Wow I cranked this one out, folks. I'm so happy people seem invested in this story, and I hope you'll stick with me on this journey until the end! As always, please visit my twitter @likesatellitez and feel free to @ me or dm me about my stories or vixx or whatever you fancy!! And keep your kudos and comments coming--I love them!!

 

 

Wonshik opens his eyes, and Hakyeon is there, kneeling over him with his faintly glowing tan skin. He glances around for a brief moment. Everything is bright and there is nothing. But if Hakyeon is here--

“Oh, fuck, I did it? I moved on?” he gasps, throat feeling raw as if his body had just been disintegrated into millions and millions of tiny floating human particles and then reassembled rapidly. 

Hakyeon purses his lips and gives a small shake of his head. Behind him, Jaehwan comes up and places his hands on Hakyeon’s shoulders, staring down at Wonshik. 

“No, you dumbass, you broke the one damn rule of fucking haunting so you were ripped back into the void,” Jaehwan scoffs. 

Wonshik blinks slowly, eyes trailing down from Jaehwan’s disgruntled face to Hakyeon, who is glowing everywhere and also naked again, as he always is. 

“How can you chastise me about the rules when the  _ biggest rule of preternatural existence  _ is sitting broken in front of me?” Wonshik grumbles, gesturing wildly at Hakyeon’s lovely expanse of skin. 

“That!” Jaehwan cries in exasperation and denial, “Is! Different!”

Wonshik snorts and then starts testing out his limbs, which feel stiff and locked in place. “I feel like I died all over again.”

“You pretty much did, you idiot,” Jaehwan says, moving away from Hakyeon to pace around in circles, throwing his arms up in the air. “I told you all the rules before I put you back down in that apartment, you know? I trusted you to not blow this.”

“I don’t get it, Jae,” Wonshik mutters, as Hakyeon reaches out to massage his forearms for him. “Thanks, Yeonie,” he adds, and Hakyeon gives him a sweet, delicate smile. “Really, Jae, what did I do?”

Jaehwan kicks at the open space in front of him, his body jerking wildly with the effort. “You started phasing, Wonshik.”

“I started what?” 

Hakyeon moves his gentle hands down to massage at Wonshik’s wrist and palm and fingers, and it feels like a sudden rush of blood, and Hakyeon whispers, “You touched a human, didn’t you?”

Wonshik presses his lips together and starts shaking his head before he remembers. He isn’t sure how he even still formulates memories at all, but it is there, the muscle memory or maybe the memory of the sensation of Taekwoon’s skin beneath his fingers. 

“I did,” he breathes out, both terrified and pleased that he somehow managed to cross the realm. 

“Wonshik,” Hakyeon murmurs, crawling into Wonshik’s lap, fully nude but not caring at all, “if you want to help him, you have to stay at a distance. The closer you get to him, the more you wish he could see you, hear you,  _ feel  _ you, the more your body will phase.”

“I could come back to life?” He imagines Taekwoon seeing him fully formed and human in his apartment, giving one of his tentative smiles, before reaching out to feel Wonshik’s totally human, totally sexy and strong body under his warm hands. 

Jaehwan comes up behind Hakyeon and grips him under his armpits, hauling him out of Wonshik’s lap. “No, love, he doesn’t deserve your beautiful flesh on him,” Jaehwan hisses. 

Hakyeon whines a little but allows Jaehwan heave him up to standing. Wonshik averts his eyes, never quite used to seeing Hakyeon in his fully exposed, fully glowing form. 

“The more you wish to become part of that realm, Wonshik, the more your soul will forget its goal to move on,” Hakyeon says, as Jaehwan pulls him back to his chest, wrapping his pale arms around Hakyeon’s tan middle. 

“So, what?”

“So you’ll become a fucking demon,” Jaehwan hisses, and Hakyeon coos and rubs at Jaehwan’s arms calmly, leaning back to press a kiss to his cheek. “I will not let you become a demon, Wonshik. You were just a lost soul when I found you in the inbetween, but now you’re my friend, and I will  _ not _ let you corrupt your soul for all eternity, you hear me?”

“But Jae--”

Jaehwan shakes his head, and Wonshik’s words die in his throat. 

“I have to go back,” Wonshik whimpers pathetically. “I promise I won’t try to touch him again. I just need to go back to find my killer and move on and--”

“How do you know it isn’t Taekwoon’s time to die?” Jaehwan cuts in, and Hakyeon slaps his hip sharply, stepping away from Jaehwan’s arms. 

“That was cruel,” Hakyeon says, and Jaehwan reaches out for him again, eyes apologetic. 

“Then I’ll let him die,” Wonshik croaks, the words like thick poison on the roof of his mouth. “Please, Jae, I can’t be stuck in the inbetween forever. I need to move on. Please let me go back.” Even as he says the words, Wonshik can’t help but think of Taekwoon’s face, the plushness of his cheeks and the little cute purse of his pale pink lips. 

Hakyeon moves to grab Wonshik’s hands and pull him up to standing, brushing at imaginary dust on Wonshik’s clothing. He then pulls Wonshik into a tight hug, Jaehwan huffing in jealous indignation behind them. He turns to press his lips to Wonshik’s ear and murmurs, “This is no way to exist, Wonshik. You know that. Don’t wish for this.”

Wonshik feels something sharp at his core again, something human and alive, and he nods. One glimpse at Jaehwan’s face, full of possessive but pained love for Hakyeon, and he  _ knows _ . But he doesn’t love Taekwoon; it’s different. He’s just protective in the way one gets with a pet. With a toy. With a character in a novel or movie. He barely knows him but he also knows him so well. He just doesn’t want to watch him die. Isn’t that fair? 

“I’ll send you back,” Jaehwan replies finally, sighing. “But you have to promise not to--”

“I promise, so please?” Wonshik implores. 

“Say the words, Wonshik,” Jaehwan says, jaw set sternly. 

“I promise I won’t try to phase into that realm. I promise I will only go back to find my killer. That’s it.”

“I’m going to send Hakyeon off, and then I’ll deal with you,” Jaehwan replies, turning to Hakyeon, who walks closer to take Jaehwan’s hand. 

Jaehwan cups Hakyeon’s cheeks and pulls him into a kiss, and Wonshik turns away. He never quite got used to seeing this when he was exploring the void with Jaehwan right after his death. Every time Jaehwan called Hakyeon back to him like this, it was like watching a natural disaster, like watching someone losing everything all at once, like that moment when the tsunami swells up behind a man, and he looks up at the wall of water and there isn’t even any time to mourn. 

Jaehwan pulls away, and takes Hakyeon’s hands in his own. 

“Until next time,” he says, and Hakyeon gives him that smile that says everything Wonshik doesn’t think he ever said when he was alive. 

And then Jaehwan opens his mouth and starts singing, and Hakyeon’s skin burns up, bursting into gaseous flame, glowing so brightly that Wonshik has to cover his eyes, though he knows Jaehwan watches the entire time, watches as Hakyeon returns to his place in the vast expanse of space, where there will always be room for more souls like his after they’re gone from the earth. 

When it’s over, Wonshik rubs at his eyes to try to rid his vision of the blinking dark spots that always appear when Hakyeon becomes a star again in front of him. 

Jaehwan, face drawn closed and tight, holds his hand out for Wonshik. Wonshik steps close and twines their fingers together, feeling the familiar coolness of Jaehwan’s skin on his own. For someone who glows so warmly, Wonshik is always surprised at how cold Jaehwan’s skin is. Though he doesn’t have any blood, any warmth inside, so it makes sense. 

“What will happen to you if they find out, Jae?” Wonshik asks nervously. 

“What could they possibly do to me that would be worse than this?” Jaehwan replies darkly, and Wonshik shuts up. “Don’t end up like me, Wonshik. Despite the rumors, love cannot actually overcome all obstacles. Death is an obstacle that not even love can overcome.”

Wonshik stares down at their interlocked hands and nods. 

And then it goes dark again.

 

Taekwoon wakes up to a loud banging on his door. He groggily lifts up onto his elbows and blinks at the light streaming through his blinds, which he’d forgotten to close last night. He also, apparently, had forgotten to get changed, and, in alarm, he realizes he’d slept the entire night in his outside clothes. 

He will have to change all his sheets and blankets. And burn this set for good measure. He is dirty. So dirty. 

“Taek!” 

“Wha--”

Sanghyuk throws open Taekwoon’s bedroom door, and Taekwoon squeaks, rolling off the bed until he’s sprawled out on all fours on his floor. 

“Hyung, are you...are you wearing your  _ outside clothes _ ?” Sanghyuk cries, still hovering in the door. 

Behind him, Hongbin pads over in his socks and waves a bag of McDonald’s and a cardboard coffee tray with three iced americanos. “Morning all, I thought I’d surprise you with--Taekwoon, are you...did you sleep in your outsi--”

“Yes!” Taekwoon cries hysterically, “I slept in my outside clothes, okay? Can we leave, so I can strip these sheets and say goodbye to them forever and then shower and change?”

Hongbin snickers behind the greasy brown paper bag and nods, stepping back into the kitchen. 

“You okay, hyung?” Sanghyuk asks tentatively. 

Taekwoon rolls up onto his knees and then heaves himself up to standing, his legs unsteady beneath him, having cramped from falling asleep curled up like an armadillo in the center of his mattress. 

“I’m fine, Hyukkie. I was just really tired and forgot to change. Go help Hongbin find the plates. Don’t let him eat that greasy mess off my nice coffee table,” Taekwoon says, tearing all the blankets and sheets and pillow cases from his bed and leaving them in a sad heap on his floor by the footboard of his bed. On his way out, he touches Sanghyuk on the arm and gives an unconvincing smile. 

With the bathroom door shut safely behind him, Taekwoon drops down onto the closed toilet seat and puts his head in his hands. 

That fucking ghost had been in his bedroom. On his bed. Speaking to him. Touching him.

_ Wonshik _ . 

Grunting in frustration, Taekwoon quickly turns the shower water on and lets the sound of heavy water pressure drown out the sound of Wonshik’s gruff voice in his skull. 

Though, now that he thinks about it, Wonshik vanished rather suddenly last night after everything. Taekwoon wonders briefly-- _ very briefly, okay? _ \--if Wonshik is okay. He isn’t sure if dissipating into nothingness is a normal ghost occurrence, but it looked like Wonshik was just as surprised by the whole thing as Taekwoon. Did being a ghost come with some kind of rule book? Instruction manual? Worst-case scenario checklist? 

Taekwoon strips out of his sweat-stiff shirt and jeans and stands in front of his covered bathroom mirror. Tentatively, with slightly shaky hands, Taekwoon unclasps the sheet from over the glass and lets it fall in a pool into the sink basin. 

But then only his reflection stares back, and Taekwoon feels a twinge of disappointment. 

Ah,  _ fuck _ . 

He ruffles his hair and stares at the planes of his flat pale chest and the softness of his stomach. The downy trail of hair leading from his navel to his cock. The teeny splotch of dark tan around his small nipples. 

Did Wonshik watch him because he found him attractive, or was is a ghost intimidation tactic? 

Taekwoon runs his hands over his skin, trying to keep his eyes on his own reflection to see if he could find anything sexual, anything remotely beautiful about his own appearance, but it just makes him frustrated. He is just a skinny lanky mess with a pillowy stomach and the world’s smallest fucking nipples.

Why is the thought of a fucking ghost being turned on by his body somehow a boost for his self-esteem? 

Plus, he has Hongbin, sort of. 

He has Hongbin’s cock sometimes, when he gets into those moods of his, those moods that make him crave the thick weight of cock in his mouth or his hands. Though, to be honest, he hasn’t been fucked in a while, and it’s something he tries not to think about, but when he does, it makes him want to tear his hair out. 

He’s sure if he went out to some stupid bar with Sanghyuk or something, he could find someone who would fulfil his wants. Surely in this city there is someone willing to lube him up and bend him over and fill him until he cries.  

But Taekwoon has never been that kind of guy. Even in college, he was never the type to flood his veins with liquor and find a quick fuck. He and Hongbin had a thing for a while, as friends who had little time to date because their studies were more important, as friends who had needs and could put aside shame and discomfort to feel the fleeting pleasure of touch and release. 

Taekwoon steps away from the mirror, realizing Wonshik is not going to appear in the glass to tell him he’s fuckable, the thought of which Taekwoon has no idea  _ why he even wants anyhow _ . 

Under the spray, Taekwoon shuts his eyes and lets the water pound over his skin, searing hot and hard--another amazing benefit of this damn haunted apartment. Water pressure of the Gods!

_ Taekwoon _ . 

Taekwoon drops his head to the tiled wall of his shower stall and whines. Why is the sexy voice of his fucking apartment ghost still ringing in his ears? Why does his body react to that voice in a way it hasn’t reacted to anyone in ages? Not since he was a young gay baby in high school, listening to Trey Songz (masturbating to Trey Songz) has he felt this way about a voice.

Taekwoon feels his hand drifting down his slick stomach to his soft cock, but then he quickly moves it away, holding it against the wall. 

No. He will not jerk off to the imaginary voice of a fucking ghost. 

He is not that far gone. Not that desperate. 

Oh, who is he kidding: Taekwoon is the most desperate, pathetic creature on this sad earth. Staying in a haunted apartment, despite several warnings from people he cares about, his neighbors, and even the damn ghost who is haunting him. And he hasn’t touched his own cock in weeks because he’s been afraid that ghost would be watching. But Wonshik isn’t here anymore, and he’s both displeased and pleased at the thought. 

He can feel the  _ need _ sitting in his gut like plaque, like some gross build-up coating the walls of his insides. 

Wonshik’s fingers on his wrist had been the most intimate touch Taekwoon had felt in months. Not even Hongbin’s touch felt that way. There was an electricity in it, an urgency. Something forbidden and awful, and Taekwoon hates how badly he wants to feel it again.

Taekwoon tips his face into the spray of the water, feels the droplets pelting his eyelids, his lips, his cheeks, and he wills himself to forget. He wills himself to forget the memory of touch, the memory of Wonshik’s voice. It had been a warning. Not a confession. Nothing sexy about it. 

Taekwoon is so fucked up, imagining Wonshik saying his name in that rough deep voice as he drifts his hand down to his cock again, this time in resignation. 

He tries to picture Hongbin instead. To picture Hongbin’s muscular thighs spread on his couch, Taekwoon settled on the wood floor in front of him, kissing up the line of Hongbin’s flushed inner thigh until he could nuzzle at Hongbin’s cock. He looks up, seeking praise, seeing recognition that it is Taekwoon himself giving this pleasure, but then Wonshik is looking down at him. 

Wonshik is carding his hand through Taekwoon’s dark hair, pushing it away from his forehead as he murmurs, “Taekwoon.” 

Taekwoon fists his cock and fights to think of Hongbin again, replacing the face in his fantasy once more. Hongbin’s sharp jaw and gently sloping nose, his beautiful but masculine features. His eyelids fluttering shut, never quite looking at Taekwoon, always somehow seeing through him even as Taekwoon puts his whole being into giving him pleasure so he’ll be praised, so he’ll be seen. 

Taekwoon grunts in disappointment, and then Wonshik is there again, kneeling on Taekwoon’s bed beside him, before he shoves at Taekwoon’s shoulders to press him down to the mattress. 

“Taekwoon,” he says, and he doesn’t need to say anything else. Just acknowledging that it is Taekwoon, Taekwoon he wants, Taekwoon he finds physically appealing, and God, he’s so pathetic, as he feels precum beading at the tip of his cock. 

Taekwoon reaches his free hand around, slicked with soap, and he slips his fingers down his tailbone to his entrance, and he hasn’t touched himself this way in ages. 

He wants to feel the weight of another body pressed to his back. He wants to feel breath against his throat, behind his ear. He wants to feel hands fisted in his hair, pulling him against a warm chest, warm skin. He wants to beg to come. He wants so much that he’s denied himself for so long. 

“Won..Wonshik,” Taekwoon gasps, simply pressing the pad of his finger over his hole, and it’s enough to make him come, releasing over his other hand, stroking himself through his orgasm under the spray of water. 

He’s breathing hard, letting the water rinse his hands, his chest burning with shame and pleasure of release, when he feels the chill of air in his bathroom. 

Outside the bathroom, Taekwoon hears Sanghyuk calling, “Hyung, the McMuffins are getting cold!”

But Taekwoon knows this chill. He knows the way it settles on his skin like cold fog, despite the heat of the shower. Tearing the shower curtain aside, he steps onto the bath mat and faces the mirror. 

Wonshik blinks at him from the other side. 

“Wonshik,” he says, knowing the flush of arousal and orgasm is still visible on his cheekbones and in his wide eyes, and he can’t help the strange sense of relief that fills his core. 

Wonshik’s dusty pink lips part behind the glass, and his eyes travel down the expanse of Taekwoon’s bare skin. 

“You called for me,” he says, and he sounds miserable about it in a way that makes Taekwoon feel guilty. 

“I was...testing it out,” Taekwoon lies, still feeling the sensation of his own pulsing cock in his palm. 

Wonshik’s eyes are dark, shuttered off. He shakes his head. 

“Don’t call for me again,” he says. 

“But you said--” Desperation and irritation swell in Taekwoon’s veins, and Taekwoon can taste the bitterness in his mouth. It clings to his tongue, and he wants to spit it at Wonshik for starting this. For saying his name like he cared. For touching him with a heavy, human, warm hand. For refusing to leave his house and then refusing to acknowledge that he  _ started this _ . 

“I won’t come next time,” Wonshik cuts in, disappearing from behind the glass just as suddenly as he appeared. 

Taekwoon wants to scream. He wants to cover the mirror and forget all of this. He wants to yell Wonshik’s name over and over until he has to come back. 

Instead, he stares into the glass and hisses, “I’m going to make you regret this.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks for joining me again for another episode of ghostfucker, y'all. I felt I had to update today in celebration of LR comeback announcement. God, I can't wait for this mess of emotions. Anyhow, here's more. Please find me on twitter to chat @likesatellitez.

Taekwoon is a natural grudge holder. 

The opposite of Sanghyuk, the canine of the group. More like a goldfish, really, with how easily he forgets his anger in the midst of continuing to circle his little bowl. 

Taekwoon is entirely feline in his grudge-holding. You pet his fur the wrong way once, and he will never let you live it down. Son Hyunwoo from grade school who told him he had a weird mouth? Yeah, Taekwoon never forgot. And when he got kinda hot in high school, he found Son Hyunwoo and kissed him right with that weird mouth until Hyunwoo admitted he was wrong. 

Of course, Hyunwoo had completely forgotten all about his minor insult from many years back, but it felt validating all the same to Taekwoon. 

Wonshik will be slightly harder to torment, though, Taekwoon realizes bitterly, because of the regrettable fact that he doesn’t exist in the same realm of existence. 

Taekwoon starts small, uncovering all the reflective surfaces, catching sight of Wonshik in them with a teasing smirk and a short wave of his fingers. He holds up his large bowl of buttered, salted popcorn to Wonshik’s reflection in the refrigerator door with a tilt of his head. An offering he knows Wonshik wants to, but cannot, accept. 

And how does he know?

He knows because Wonshik is always there when he’s cooking. When he’s eating. When there is food. He can feel the chill of Wonshik’s body hovering close to him, cooling off his steaming food rapidly. Taekwoon can almost feel the desperation radiating in that coldness, the want, the desire to be able to eat, to be able to taste. 

Wonshik’s reflection crosses his arms over his chest and scoffs, turning away and vanishing. 

Taekwoon flops back onto his couch, feeling his body sinking into the soft leather, and he turns on the queued up film:  _ Horrid Ghosts from the Great Beyond II: Ugly Ghost Revenge _ . It’s a painful experience for both of them, but Taekwoon rather enjoys the sight of men in jumpsuits vaporizing the terrible ghosts from civilian homes. It’s comforting. 

“Take that, ghost scum!” Taekwoon cries triumphantly as a ghoul with dripping green slime for flesh is shot and vaporized into millions of little green pieces. 

He can feel Wonshik nearby still, his aura somehow growing warmer, as if fueled and heated by rage. It warms Taekwoon’s heart. 

He finishes the entire bowl of popcorn, save for one kernel, which he leaves out on the table with a clipped “help yourself, ghost scum.” 

The next week, Taekwoon decides to change tactics. Instead of slipping into his fuzzy robe in the morning, he simply rolls out of bed in the nude and starts going about his morning business. He brushes his teeth naked. He makes toast naked. He does the morning crossword puzzle naked. It’s only later, when he’s wiping toast crumbs off the skin of his cock, does he realize this is why people don’t do everything naked. It’s extremely unsanitary and actually kind of gross. 

So he throws on a pair of super low-slung shorts, sitting just below the slight jut of his hip bones, exposing a tiny hint of happy trail. A single centimeter or two, and Taekwoon would be cock-out.

He’s settled on the couch again, more than halfway through the crossword, when his phone rings. 

“Ah, Hongbin,” Taekwoon cries shrilly, hoping wherever in the apartment Wonshik is, he is listening. “I was just about to call.”

“Hey, Taek. Are you going to this thing tonight?” Taekwoon can hear the rustling of trees and the gentle scritching of a broom on concrete. 

“Thing? What thing?” 

“Didn’t you check your email? I know you like to avoid work and any and all obligations, but Jinyoung sent out this email like six days ago, ya doof.”

“Don’t call me a doof. Can’t you be an adult and swear? I know you know how to swear.” He knows, he wants to add, because he’s heard the barely whispered slurs of  _ fuck, ah, fuck _ countless times from Hongbin’s pious lips. 

“Sure thing, doof. But anyhow, Jinyoung is throwing a thing for Sunwoo and Junghwan’s engagement and--”

“Not an...engagement party, right? I know you wouldn’t ask me to go to an engagement party, Lee Hongbin.”

Hongbin sighs on the other end of the line, and Taekwoon can practically see him pacing and jutting the end of the broom in the air like he wishes he could stab Taekwoon. “It’s a party that happens to be celebrating an engagement, but it’s at a club, okay? Fun things. No presents or weird party games, I promise.”

Taekwoon groans and pouts up at the ceiling. “Fine. But if I go, you’re buying my first round of drinks.”

“I’m getting you one shot, Jung Taekwoon. We both know your tolerance for liquor is that of an underweight prepubescent boy.”

“I’m insulted,” Taekwoon croaks.

“As you should be, since that was an insult.” He can hear the mirth in Hongbin’s voice, and he hates how it kind of turns him on. 

“Text me the address, and I’ll be there.”

“You already  _ have  _ the address, remember? The email you ignored?”

Taekwoon tunes him out, trying to mentally calculate if he has any clean laundry or nice things to wear. He hasn’t been out in ages.

“Hello? The email? Taekwoon?”

“Ah, sorry, Beanie. Send me the address cause I’m hanging up! Bye!”

“ _ Emai-- _ ”

Taekwoon drops his phone down to the couch, where it starts buzzing angrily with what can only be Hongbin’s revenge for being cut off. He goes to stand in front of his open closet, peering into its monochromatic contents wearily. Gray sweater? Dark gray sweater? Black sweater? Black t-shirt? Black button-down? Gray button-down? He finds a clean white shirt that makes his skin look nice. He finds that white softens his features in a way outsiders find more attractive than when he looks like a murderous vampire. 

Because Taekwoon has a new plan. 

A plan he’s decided to call  _ Fuck Loudly in front of the Ghost _ . Or maybe it’s plan  _ Get Fucked to Annoy Ghost _ . Though partly Taekwoon would like the plan to be  _ Get Fucked to Arouse Ghost _ . He isn’t sure if that’s even possible. If Wonshik can’t eat, could he even get hard? How does an undead body function? Why is Taekwoon even thinking about a ghost’s penis anyhow? 

Well, maybe it’s because Taekwoon has already touched his own goddamn dick to the thought of a ghost’s goddamn dick, that’s why. 

Taekwoon hates this. He hates it so much. He has to get out of this apartment, find a  _ human _ dick, attached to a  _ human _ , and get  _ human  _ fucked. He has an extra two hours to kill before he’s supposed to meet everyone, so Taekwoon allows himself to indulge in some oft-forgotten pre-going out hoing-up. 

He has this one stick of black eyeliner, sharpened down to a little nub, that he drags across his upper eyelids and smudges out under his lower lashes. He remembers a boy in college, Hakyeon, who taught him that trick. Taking a little q-tip and licking it just slightly, he’d lean in close and pull at the edges of the harsh black line until it smeared just right. He was a professional in the art of ho-ing up. 

He hopes Wonshik is fluttering somewhere nearby, wondering anxiously  _ what’s he ho-ing up for?  _

He hopes Wonshik remembers this feeling, relearns and memorizes the sensation of  _ dread _ , just from this night alone, and Taekwoon hopes it stays with him for all his immortal days in the great beyond. 

Taekwoon looks at himself in the mirror and tries once again to see himself as something desirable. As someone you’d see at the market wielding a full basket of apples, and you’d offer to carry that basket for him because he’s cute when he’s flustered. As someone you’d see across the street waiting to cross to your side, who you’d catch glances with, about whom you’d think  _ I wonder what makes his pulse race _ . As someone you’d see at the bar nursing two fingers of whiskey on the rocks, and you’d sit beside him on a wobbly wooden stool, and you’d turn to him and ask  _ Come here often? _

Taekwoon wants to be that person. 

He remembers the first time he asked Hongbin to look at him like that person. How Hongbin fought it, but he loved Taekwoon too much to think too hard about it. Taekwoon wants the person who looks at him to see his body as a vast unconquerable body of water, as an unnavigable ocean that one can never truly know. He wants the person who finally looks at him to traipse the length of his body on tentative, unsteady legs, not knowing what he’ll find but knowing that, in the end, it’ll have been worth the journey. 

Taekwoon wants, for once in his life, to  _ attract _ , in the way others make seem so easy. In the way Sanghyuk slips off his shirt in the summer when they help wash Hongbin’s grandmother’s car, and traffic seems to stop. In the way Hongbin pushes his hair back from his face, and his skin sings to passersby in a language that Taekwoon wishes he had been taught.

Taekwoon looks at the little wing of smudged coal at the corner of his eyes and thinks  _ I look powerful _ . 

That’s a start. 

Wonshik is, as always as of late, noticeably silent and absent. 

Taekwoon can feel the denim of his skinny jeans cupping a little too tightly around his tiddly bits, but he can’t seem to care. It’s actually kind of comforting how tight they are. He can feel his blood. He has so much blood. 

When Taekwoon gets to the club, the aptly yet inappropriately named REAR END (situated exactly at the end of the block, with an entrance at the rear), there’s a line that stretches around to the front, but Taekwoon just gives his name to the bouncer, one of the young, body-builder types, and skips the line. 

In the VIP booth, Dongwoo, Sunwoo, Junghwan, and Jinyoung are already sprawled out on the red velvet booth seats. Hongbin, Gongchan, and Sanghyuk are setting up a line of shots on the table. 

A series of high-pitched whistles breaks out when the group looks up and spots Taekwoon lingering awkwardly in their periphery. 

“Get in here, hot stuff,” Sunwoo cries, waving Taekwoon over to the booths. 

“I feel...overdressed,” Taekwoon observes, looking at the slurry of ripped jeans and t-shirts on his friends. 

“You look like you’re here to get a dicking,” Gongchan replies, and Hongbin slaps the back of his head. “What? He does. He looks like he’s here to get a dic--”

“We get it, dumbnuts,” Hongbin hisses as Gongchan rubs the back of his neck with a pout. 

“Well, he’s not wrong,” Taekwoon mutters, and Junghwan rises up from his seat to scream, “What?! Jung Taekwoon, out for a dicking?!”

“Can we please just,” Jinyoung whimpers, rubbing at his eyes, “stop using that term.”

Dongwoo is already reaching with a twitchy hand towards the line of shots. Taekwoon drops down next to him, and they exchange weary, old-people glances. 

Junghwan grabs his shot and holds it up. “As it is  _ my _ \--”

“ _ Our _ \--”

“Engagement party, I’d like to thank everyone who came out to support me--”

“ _ Us _ \--”

“In this celebratory period before the rollercoaster of life inevitably slows to a boring, monotonous plateau of--”

“Dearest,” Sunwoo interrupts again, placing a hand on Junghwan’s thigh as Junghwan’s chin quivers. “The shots, perhaps?”

Junghwan nods, lifting his glass and wordlessly tossing it back. 

Everyone glances around nervously before Sunwoo rolls his eyes and throws his own drink back, signaling the others to do the same. 

Taekwoon clinks his glass against Dongwoo’s and tips it back. His throat burns, and the heat settles in his chest like a swallowed star. 

 

An hour in: Hongbin, clad in his utterly devastated pair of lightwash ripped jeans and striped tank top, has requested and been denied three times by the DJ to play Park Hyoshin ballads. Taekwoon takes a shot each time Hongbin returns unsuccessful. He just looks so damn cute. 

Two hours in: The DJ has discovered an odd techno remix to “Wild Flower” and Hongbin is losing his shit on the dance floor, sandwiched sweatily between Sanghyuk (who has that glassy look of tipsiness in his eyes already) and Gongchan. Taekwoon fights down the bitter sensation of jealousy clawing up the rungs of his ribs. Or is that just acid reflux?

Two and a half hours in: Hongbin is shirtless, Sanghyuk licking the sweat from the back of his neck, Gongchan kissing down his sternum. The Hyoshin remix seems to still be playing. Or perhaps all the songs are blurring together in Taekwoon’s liquor-addled mind. Taekwoon sips a drink that seems to glow in the blacklight, and he finds it oddly beautiful. Beautiful and distracting, he might add, as he peers over the rim of the glass as Hongbin bends completely in half, his hips held tightly in Sanghyuk’s hands as he wriggles his ass against his crotch. Taekwoon wonders when his friends got so close. 

Three hours in: Taekwoon watches Hongbin leave with Sanghyuk and Gongchan, and it feels like his feet are slowly sinking into the sticky tile floor of the club. It feels like there’s bile under his tongue, burning at his adenoids and tonsils and throat. He moves to the dance floor and takes the hand of the only person on the floor taller than him. He wants to feel little and wanted. The man looks down and smirks like he’s just found a fiver in the sewer grate. 

Three hours and fifteen minutes in: the Hyoshin song finally seems to end, and Taekwoon feels the liquor shifting into need in his gut. The man has his hands, warm and big and sturdy, on Taekwoon’s hips, and they don’t feel like Wonshik’s at all. Who’s Wonshik? The man has his lips at Taekwoon’s ear, and there’s sweat on the man’s upper lip that Taekwoon can feel on the cusp of his ear as he says,  _ I’m Sungrok _ . And Taekwoon thinks he says his own name in reply. 

Three and a half hours in: Sungrok has Taekwoon up against the back (which is the front) of the REAR END building, and the stucco feels like little thumbtacks against the thin material of his shirt and his bare skin underneath. Taekwoon feels small. So small. And it’s kind of nice. It’s nice how Sungrok has lips against his in urgency, like he can’t get enough, like Taekwoon is too much for him in the opposite way of, Taekwoon imagines, how Hongbin sees him. That way being that Taekwoon will never  _ be _ enough. 

Sungrok’s gets a hand between their bodies and presses it to the impossibly tight crotch of his jeans, and Taekwoon hears himself cry out. His voice sounds so loud in the open air, in his open mind. 

And then Sungrok stops, jolts. He’s swearing. He’s yelling. 

Taekwoon doesn’t know what he’s done, but Sungrok is bleeding on the back of the neck, just a slight bubble of blood below his ear. 

“Did I--?”

Sungrok glances around nervously because there’s no one else there, and Taekwoon’s hands had both been fisted in his shirt. 

“Fuckers, come out,” Sungrok yells, and Taekwoon is suddenly so tired and confused and his eyes are oddly wet. “Jesus, I’m sorry. I don’t know where that...something just  _ hit  _ me, and I--”

Taekwoon shakes his head and steps away from the wall. “’S okay. I’m gonna go home, I think.”

Sungrok’s expression shifts. Disappointment. That feels kind of nice too. Taekwoon hands Sungrok his phone. 

“Digits,” he slurs. 

Sungrok types in his number, and Taekwoon slips his phone back into his pocket after calling a cab. 

“You’re really sexy, Taekwoon,” Sungrok says, and Taekwoon hears it in Wonshik’s voice. 

 

Wonshik watched Taekwoon leave from the window. He watched his long legs fold up to fit into the cab on the way to whatever club Hongbin had called him to meet at. 

Wonshik knows Taekwoon wanted him to wonder. He has no idea  _ why _ Taekwoon is so hell-bent on this strange but kind of sexy revenge scheme. He said he wouldn’t expose himself to Taekwoon anymore, so what? Okay, weird phrasing, but the point still stands. 

Taekwoon took it hard. Didn’t he realize this was harder for Wonshik, the one who needed to be able to vocalize an actual warning to him or he’d  _ die _ ? Was Taekwoon mad Wonshik wasn’t going to materialize while he masturbates? Would it help if he slowly flickered the lights on and off, so Taekwoon knew he was there while he fisted his cute cock?

Wonshik hates to admit how human he feels. How alive he feels. Normally, Wonshik thinks, the word  _ alive _ is used as a positive thing. Ah, this makes me feel  _ alive _ . Or, I’ve never felt more  _ alive _ . Bu,t to Wonshik, this is honestly a nightmare. 

The sight of Taekwoon offering him a half-eaten piece of toast makes Wonshik ache. The sight of Taekwoon slowly stripping by his bedside, glancing up at the ceiling, watching for him, for  _ him _ . God, how he aches. 

The sight of Taekwoon scornfully renting every single ghost movie on Netflix (though he turns off the ones with happy, romantic ghost plotlines and not vicious ghost annihilation). Wonshik wants to laugh. It’s absurdity at its finest. But at one point, Taekwoon cringes, visibly shaken as one of the ghosts is wrongfully poofed, and Wonshik aches again. 

And then there’s Hongbin. Wonshik could wring the pretty monk’s throat, honestly. If he were human, of course, Hongbin would be completely his type. Aloof but charming, with this bright staccato laugh, and these obscenely precious cheek dimples. But from the outside, as a casual observer of Hongbin in the context of Taekwoon’s life, Wonshik can’t stand him. He knows Taekwoon wants him. He knows Taekwoon is this sweet needy little thing around him in a way he never is around anybody else. 

This is where that casual observer thing really makes Wonshik ache. Because one night, after Taekwoon falls asleep, Sanghyuk and Hongbin are sitting on his couch, and Sanghyuk whispers  _ We need to tell him _ and Hongbin shakes his head and replies  _ I can’t do it; you do it _ . And Wonshik watches as Sanghyuk cups Hongbin’s cheeks and touches their foreheads together. And Wonshik aches again. 

But Wonshik can’t interfere. This isn’t his life. He isn’t even really here. He’s just sharing the space on a separate plane. He’s just watching Taekwoon’s life play out like some bizarre drama--like the ones Wonshik vaguely remembers seeing while his dentist tapped at his molars with a tiny dentist chisel. 

Wonshik doesn’t really know if ghosts can have an intuition, but there’s this uncomfortable miasma of  _ something _ floating over his skin, and it’s telling him to go to Taekwoon. It’s telling him that something is going to happen at that club. 

Wonshik feels the space around him, can almost see it shift as he moves, allowing him to move through this plane. There’s this thickness, this kind of ghostly gravity tying his energy to the apartment, but there’s also this tug, somewhere under his fourth rib, that seems to have anchored itself onto Taekwoon. As Taekwoon drifted away each day, Wonshik felt the anchor dragging against the seafloor between them, and he just kept hoping it would break off completely (or sink in somewhere and reel Taekwoon back to him). 

He can feel Taekwoon now, wherever he is at that club. And he really wishes the anchor would break off now because he can feel the insistent tug at his ribcage again. 

Well, he supposes, there’s no better time to try than now. Now, when his bones feel like they might just get yanked out of his flesh from the inside. He pictures himself showing up at the club with his spine sticking out of the top of his head.  _ I’m here to save you, Taekwoon _ . It’s laughable, really. 

Wonshik gets to the window again and thrusts his arm through the glass. He can feel the glass resisting his energy, but his arm gets through. And then his head, and then his torso, and then his legs. And then he’s hovering over the street, staring down at the cars, at the line of people waiting for the bus. 

He pretty much blacks out after that. 

When he finally becomes aware of his surroundings again, Wonshik is floating in the air above a strip of dark concrete. Below him, two figures are pressed against the tan facade of a building pulsing with noise and light. 

It’s only when his body starts drifting without his control, down towards the ground, that Wonshik realizes one of the figures is Taekwoon. His first thought is that Taekwoon is in trouble. That would explain the aggressive yanking. Well, not really. Wonshik doesn’t think there is anything in the ghost haunting book that says you can latch onto a person. The closer he gets to the ground, the more Wonshik feels that ache in his body, that gravitational pull. Like his body wants to orbit. 

Like his body wants to  _ haunt _ . 

And then he sees it. The connection between the man and Taekwoon. At their lips. And it takes a moment before Wonshik’s insides feel like they’re churning, which is impossible, really, but he feels it anyhow. And his skin feels hot--another absurdity--and his hands are shaking. 

He is Taekwoon’s ghost.  

Taekwoon is  _ his _ home to haunt. 

And Wonshik is behind them, staring down at the shattered bottom of a beer bottle, shining in the light like sea glass, and then he’s reaching for it, pleading with time and space to allow the glass to stay in his hands. 

And then Taekwoon’s head is tipped back against the wall, the column of his throat bared to the dim streetlights, and his lips part as that man goes for the fly of his jeans. 

And then the glass is in Wonshik’s hand, and then it’s gone. 

The man screams. 

And Wonshik is gone. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: sorry you guys had to wait a while for this update. I was in a weird headspace. Thanks to everyone who donated to my Ko-fi page. If I owe you a drabble for donating, please come harass me on twitter @likesatellitez   
> Also please continue commenting and kudoing. Here's some angst and porn.

Wonshik is expecting it, this time, when he blinks himself into consciousness or maybe existence, and Jaehwan is standing above him with a scowl and crossed arms. 

“You’re seriously the worst at this,” Jaehwan grits out bitterly. 

“I’m not so sure,” Wonshik says, pretending to dust off his pants (though there is nothing there because dust doesn’t exist in the void) as he stands. “Someone, who one might consider my only role model by experience, seems to have quite the knack for conjuring a passed soul back to the void on a whim.”

Jaehwan’s scowl somehow deepens, etching the heavy, displeased lines into his cheeks. It isn’t a good look for him. “Honestly, Wonshik, I gave you one rule. Don’t try. To will yourself. Into that. Plane!”

Wonshik offers only a shrug by way of reply, tucking his hands into his pockets, the same hands that had somehow touched broken glass and hurled it at Taekwoon’s...assailant. 

Sure, that’s what it was. Wonshik was  _ defending him _ . 

There’s a faint echo of Taekwoon’s high, breathy gasp ringing in Wonshik’s skull cavity, and Wonshik waves his hand beside his ear to somehow dispel the annoyance like it’s an insect. 

“So I can use my ghostly forces to move objects but not my actual hands? I just can’t try to cross planes?”

“Exactly,” Jaehwan cries, grabbing Wonshik by the shoulders, fingers really digging in to Wonshik’s clavicles. “Don’t. Physically touch. Anything. Not once. Not ever. Don’t. Do not. You cannot.”

Wonshik releases a disappointed sigh but nods in understanding. “If someone comes for him--”

“Wonshik.”

“Can I use my ghostly forces to stop a bullet or blow away a knife?” 

“Wonshik, please. Just...Just let fate work the way it is meant to,” Jaehwan begs, dropping his head to Wonshik’s the crook of Wonshik’s neck and shoulder, still clutching tightly to his shirt. “I had to do it too. I  _ know _ how it feels. I do. And Hakyeon actually loved me ba--”

Wonshik pulls free from the embrace and rubs at his face aggressively, taking a strange comfort in the feeling of his hands on  _ something real _ . Something tactile. 

“I’m sorry,” Jaehwan murmurs. “That was the wrong thing to say.”

“I don’t love him,” Wonshik groans. “I don’t even know him. Not really. It’s an attachment. Like how a child loves their ant farm or their sea monkeys.”

“And, like those sea monkeys, Taekwoon is mortal. Dangerously so,” Jaehwan reminds him. “Those things come and go through the void in a matter of hours sometimes.”

“There are sea monkeys in Heaven?”

Jaehwan just smiles. Ah, right, those secrets of the universe. 

“How did you do it, Jae?” 

Jaehwan’s smile falters, his lips quivering at the corners. “Let him die, you mean?”

“Watch him die,” Wonshik corrects.

Jaehwan tugs at his earlobe, a strange nervous tick that Wonshik has noticed Jaehwan doing. He wonders where angels get nervous ticks from. How do you develop such a human trait without humanity?

“I loved him too much to let him die alone,” Jaehwan says, speaking as if through a gauzy film, a veil over his eyes, a heavy weight in his voice box. 

Wonshik presses his lips together tightly. 

“You don’t know he’ll die,” Jaehwan says, trying to comfort him, reaching out with a cool hand on Wonshik’s arm. 

“Don’t you?” Wonshik hisses, not wanting to open his mouth for the words, afraid he’ll release whatever has been snowballing up in his gut out into the space between them. This resentment, this hopelessness. This something. 

Jaehwan shakes his head, pulling Wonshik close to him again, and Wonshik wishes he didn’t find the gesture so comforting, but, again, the tactile  _ hereness _ of Jaehwan’s body just feels so pleasant compared to the overt  _ thereness _ of every body on the other plane. 

“If he isn’t my soul to bring, I would have no idea when his death date is,” Jaehwan replies. 

“Did you love Hakyeon before or after you knew his death date, Jae?” 

Jaehwan tucks his face against Wonshik’s neck, and the lack of breath is startling, but when Jaehwan speaks, Wonshik feels the movement of lips. “Love is strange that way, Shikkie. I’m not sure when it happened. All I know is that it shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t hav--”

“You saying you wished you’d never known him?” Wonshik croaks, finding that hard to believe. Harder to believe than when he’d come to discover he was dead.

“I’m saying I wish a lot of things, Wonshik. I wish so many things that I,” he punches his palms against his own chest, his abdomen, like he’s trying to shove things back inside himself. He grips his forearms with shaking hands and adds, “I really can’t stand it. He deserves to be free out there. He earned it by  _ dying _ , Wonshik. He suffered for that place beyond, you know? Do you understand? And I’m here, the one who took him away from everything he knew, everything he desired and craved and believed, and I keep pulling him here to me. To this...this nothing. He deserves everything, Wonshik. Everything he should have had. Everything he might have had. Everything the universe has to offer. And I’m here.” He drops his hands back to his sides, and they’re still shaking. 

“My  _ love _ ,” he says, spitting the word like it sits like something vile on his tongue, “will not allow him comfort in his eternal place. It never will. Because looking at me will always remind him that he was once human. He was once a man named Cha Hakyeon who was loved by something that was not quite a man, and the two of us are literally separated by so many planes of time and space that it doesn’t even make any sense. It doesn’t. I should not even be capable of love for something like him, something like you.” 

“Then how?” Wonshik asks.

“You think I know?” He looks moments away from bursting, just how Hakyeon does when Jaehwan sends him back into space every time. “Does it make any sense that I keep letting you off the hook for things other angels would have dropped you back into the swirling void pool for? Does it make sense that I notice when you are not around? Does it make any sense that I feel a longing in the core of this form that feels so much like Hakyeon’s fingerprints on my  _ fucking soul _ ? I have no origin story, Wonshik. I just am. I wasn’t, and then I was. And I was just this. And I was told who I was and what I did. And then I was released. I, like you, watched the humans from afar for centuries, and I never felt anything beyond apathy for them and their lives and their souls. But Hakyeon,” he breathes the name so sweetly, so torturously, “made me feel human. He made me feel like I was  _ someone _ . And that is so dangerous, Wonshik. We cannot ever feel like  _ someone _ again.”

Wonshik hangs his head down, eyes on his feet. 

“Tell me you understand.”

“I don’t, but I’ll pretend I do.”

“That’s good enough for me. I’m sending you back, but you have two strikes already. If you get to five, I’m dumping you.”

“Five? Not three?”

“I’m not stupid enough to think you won’t immediately fuck something up when you get back. I’m giving you a cushion here.”

“You’re a good friend, Jae.”

Jaehwan’s lips pull up a bit again at the word, and he shakes his head. “You really didn’t listen to me, did you?”

“I’ll see you soon,” Wonshik says, waving as he feels Jaehwan’s magic pulling him across the planes. 

“I bet you will, ya big fuck up.”

 

Taekwoon is lying on his back on his bed when Wonshik returns. His eyes are tracing the cracks in his ceiling paint when he feels the air shift. Chill. Taekwoon resists the urge to fold himself up as small in the center of the mattress as possible. 

“I’m not afraid of you,” Taekwoon says, eyes still on the ceiling, following the greasy line of a water stain above one of his dusty windows. 

“Good,” is the deep-voiced reply he gets, and then Wonshik’s face appears in his bedroom mirror. 

Taekwoon forces himself to not turn away, though everything under his skin tells him to. The more he looks, the more Wonshik looks like someone Taekwoon might see in the grocery store. Someone he might find bent over a box of tangerines, trying to figure out how many constitutes a kilo without having to weigh them with the scale. Or someone he might have seen in the cafe across the street, giant headphones swaddled over his ears as he sits bent over a laptop coated in bumper stickers.

It’s disconcerting how easily Taekwoon can imagine Wonshik in flesh now. 

“Is Heaven real?” 

“Whoa there, starting with the big guns,” Wonshik replies, and there’s a gruffness to his voice that sounds like laughter.

Taekwoon rolls up until he’s sitting cross-legged in the center of his mattress, thin lanky legs tucked up, and he leans back on his hands. “Well? Was there a tunnel? A light? A gate?”

Wonshik purses his lips. “If I’d been to Heaven, would I be standing here in your ugly-ass antique mirror?”

“Excuse  _ you _ , this is shabby chic,” Taekwoon retorts, tossing his head back spitefully, throwing his messy dark fringe from his eyes. It falls back into them anyhow.

Wonshik watches the motion carefully. Taekwoon feels his gaze more than should be physically possible. Probably a psychological effect of not having sex for months now. He knows now that the lack of physical intimacy really fucks with his brain. Enough to not only see ghosts but desire their company. 

“I died here,” Wonshik says, expression still blank. 

“I figured. They talk about it on the news sometimes.”

“I don’t remember it. I don’t remember that day at all. I don’t remember what it felt like to die. I guess that’s the small mercy in all this, though it is probably why I,” Wonshik’s lips freeze, and he rubs frantically at his face, huffing in frustration. 

“Ghost problems?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“When did you disappear.” 

Wonshik’s brows pull together, and he drops his hands away from his face. “What do you mean? I don’t know what day it was. It just happened.”

“It happened once before though, right? When you,” Taekwoon pauses, drawing in a sharp breath as he touches his fingertips to his bare wrist. Wonshik watches that motion again. “When you touched me.”

“Yeah.” Wonshik sounds almost breathless. Though he shouldn’t need breath at all.

“I felt you before I left for the club, and then when I got home, you were gone. What happened?”

“I dunno.”

“Bullshit,” Taekwoon huffs, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me you threw a fucking bottle at my...date,” Taekwoon replies.

“You were drunk. You hallucinated.”

“How would you know I was drunk, unless you were there? And being drunk doesn’t make you hallucinate. Did you forget how being drunk feels already?”

“I thought you were in pain,” Wonshik whines, and he sounds so achingly human that Taekwoon wants to forgive him. 

“Maybe I was, but this is my fucking life. You’re only supposed to be haunting my apartment. How could you follow me? And why? You think you know me because you watch me shower and eat and take a shit everyday?”

“I don’t,” Wonshik cries, waving his hands around. “Jesus, fuck, I don’t watch you do that stuff at all. Most of the time I’m just hovering in spaces where I know you  _ aren’t _ so you have some semblance of privacy. Fuck, Taekwoon, I’m not a monster.”

“Sure you are. You’re the ultimate monster. The monster that was once human but now spends the rest of eternity just ruining other humans’ lives.”

Wonshik bristles at that. “Am I ruining your life? Why? Because you’re scared to masturbate in front of me?”

“I’m not scared. It’s just weird.” 

“Weird because you know I’m here or weird because you like it?” 

Taekwoon feels the heat in his chest, his throat, his cheeks. He adamantly shakes his head. “What would I like about it? You’re the one who likes it. Watching me.”

“I’m a ghost, Taekwoon. What do I care about your dick for? I’m dead. I don’t think I can even get hard anymore.” What a sad thought. 

“I don’t know your life, Wonshik. Maybe you were a pervert in life and now you’re a pervert in death,” Taekwoon hisses, leaning back more so his shirt stretches up to expose the strip of bare pale skin above his waistband. Once again he feels Wonshik’s eyes on him--dark, serious, frustrated. “You like me, don’t you? You think I’m pretty?”

“Taekwoon, don’t,” Wonshik warns. 

Taekwoon drops his palm over his crotch, tilting his hips up into the warm pressure of his hand. “I’m right, aren’t I? I can feel when you’re watching me now. I can feel the chill of you on my skin.”

Wonshik shifts, looking even more uncomfortable. “I’m sorry.”

“Why? Maybe you’re right. Maybe I like it. Maybe I spend all day at work thinking about the feeling of your fingers on my wrist. Maybe I’m just really fucked up and lonely, Wonshik, because my best friend won’t fuck me anymore, and I think he’s secretly dating my other friend (or friends?), and the ghost haunting my apartment threw a fucking bottle at the one guy who made me feel sexy in  _ months _ and scared him away. And why? Why? Because he thought I was in pain? What bullshit is that, Wonshik? Huh? I’m not stupid. I know you’ve seen me struggle to open pickle jars and trip over my own slippers, but I’m not stupid. I just want to know why.”

Wonshik flickers for a moment before disappearing. 

Taekwoon sighs and drops back on the bed again, rubbing tiredly at his eyelids. The air beside the bed shifts. Taekwoon looks up. He can’t see Wonshik, but he knows he’s there, standing over him next to the bed. 

“I don’t really remember being human,” Wonshik says, the sound coming from the air and startling Taekwoon. “It frustrates me. I don’t remember feeling hungry. I don’t remember feeling joy. I don’t remember any of it. A lot of ghosts like me at least remember how they died, but I don’t. I don’t remember anything. Except this apartment. All I want is to move on. I want to stop being invisible. I want to be surrounded by people who can see and hear me and touch me.”

Taekwoon rolls onto his side, staring at the empty open air beside his bed and trying to see Wonshik, trying to force his brain and eyes to find his form and make it visible. 

“You touched me once,” Taekwoon says, showing Wonshik his wrist as an offering. 

“I can’t,” Wonshik replies. 

“The disappearing then,” Taekwoon figures, dropping his arm back down to the bed. “But you can move objects, right? So why can’t you directly touch me?”

“I’m not really moving anything. I’m shifting the air around it because I’m moving through my side of the plane; it shifts the force around the object, moving it through the planes simultaneously.”

“I don’t get it,” Taekwoon says honestly, brows pulling together in annoyance. 

“It’s hard to explain. Just.” 

The air around Taekwoon’s head shifts, and Taekwoon realizes Wonshik is brushing his hair away from his face. Well, brushing the aura around his hair. Or something. Taekwoon looks up, and is frustrated again to not see anything but the dark wall across from his bed. 

“Just what?”

“I’ve been dead for months now. You shouldn’t even be able to hear me.” There’s a weariness in Wonshik’s voice, and then he’s sighing. 

“You sigh a lot for a ghost.”

“You think ghosts don’t sigh?”

“It just seems very human. The need to expel breath to show frustration. You don’t even breathe. You’re just pushing air around to make noise somehow,” Taekwoon replies, turning again onto his back to stare up again at the ceiling. It’s less miserable than continuing to not-see Wonshik. “I’m annoyed because the first man to show any interest in me in forever is the fucking ghost haunting my apartment.”

“I was a human too, Taekwoon,” Wonshik reminds him. 

“And now you’re not. You’re just a blob of cosmic energy. A soul, I dunno. No one will explain ghosts properly to me.”

“I’ve got nothing either.”

“I figured,” Taekwoon huffs. 

“That guy in the club was plenty interested in you, Taekwoon.”

“Don’t remind me,” Taekwoon says bitterly. “I could have been getting aggressively fucked against a wall by a giant handsome businessman, but instead I went home and couldn’t even get myself off because I was worried I couldn’t feel your aura.”

“That’s...kinda cute.”

“I’m torn between getting Hongbin back here to find a way to expel you once and for all and,” Taekwoon chokes out, pulling his shirt up over his face and hiding in it.

“And what?”

“And asking a shaman how I can make you solid again so you can touch me,” Taekwoon finishes, feeling the flush deep in his marrow and settling like a gentle heat at his core. 

“You don’t know anything about me,” Wonshik says, sounding just as oddly tortured as Taekwoon.

“I know you’re gorgeous and your voice is like smoke and you once tipped my watering can over onto my plant for me when I forgot in the morning and you once threw out a moldy apple that was sitting on my counter for weeks,” Taekwoon answers. “I know you actually don’t watch me in the shower and sometimes you shut the window for me when I accidentally leave it open when it rains. I know you worry about me. You think I’m in trouble or something.”

“You are.”

“Is it because of you?”

“Vaguely.”

“Can’t say?”

“I’m trying not to test the ghost rules. I only have three strikes left.”

“Three is a lot. We could do a lot with three strikes,” Taekwoon says, knowing he sounds a little desperate. 

“We?”

“What if you don’t try to come into this plane or whatever. What if you just place your hand over mine. Just try it. Just...just let me see what it feels like.”

“Taekwoon,” Wonshik warns, but he sounds close to cracking already. 

“Please,” Taekwoon begs, feeling somehow powerful for being able to bend the will of this creature. He slides his hand along the bedsheets towards the edge of the bed and turns his palm facing up. 

There’s a moment of silence and stillness where Taekwoon thinks maybe Wonshik shifted away. Disappeared to his corner in the living room to hide. Which would be for the better, Taekwoon is sure, for both of them. 

But then there’s a sweet gentle chill and rush of air over Taekwoon’s palm. It feels electric. Like static. Like the softest brush of friction that isn’t anything at all but Taekwoon’s muscles twitch eagerly under it. He lets out a weak whimper. 

“Here,” he says, tracing up his forearm with this thin bony fingers. 

The cold gentle pressure travels over his skin on the same path, following the deep blue trails of his veins, and Taekwoon watches the muscles in his upper arms twitching again. 

“God,” he breathes, shuddering. “It feels so strange.”

“Strange bad or strange good?”

“I don’t know. Strange,” Taekwoon replies, tilting his head to the side. “Here, please, here.” 

Wonshik pauses again, and Taekwoon whines until the icy shift of energy touches the column of his throat. He wants to move away from it. It feels so  _ wrong _ . He should be terrified. He should be running for the fucking hills. It feels like the chill should be sinking into his flesh and rotting him from the inside, but it doesn’t. It just hovers over his epidermis like the most gentle tease of crackling breath. 

“You like it.”

Taekwoon nods, head still tilted back, and then there is a touch over his jawline, his cheekbone, his earlobe. He nearly cries out at that. His ears have always been so embarrassingly sensitive. 

Wonshik is laughing. Taekwoon finds he likes the sound. He likes it a lot.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” Wonshik says again.

“I know,” Taekwoon gasps as the air traces down the other side of his face, back to his neck, then stops. “But you’ve yet to give me a better reason than ‘the ghost rules,’ so I can’t bring myself to care.”

“You’re in trouble.”

“So you’ve said,” Taekwoon mocks, pulling his shirt over his head and throwing it aside. He must have thrown it in Wonshik’s direction, because it stops in midair and flies suddenly to the left. 

“Taekwoon.” 

There’s that warning tone again, but it just makes Taekwoon shiver more, sliding his hands up his own torso, scratching over his own ribs and giving an exaggerated groan. 

“Taekwoon.”

“I love hearing you say my name,” Taekwoon teases in a breathy gasp. It’s true though. Taekwoon adores the depth of Wonshik’s voice. The way he sounds like he’s had a headcold for weeks. 

“Fuck,” Wonshik murmurs, and then there’s that touch on Taekwoon’s bare chest. “Is this okay?”

“God, yes,” Taekwoon says, feeling all the muscles in his body protesting as if he’d been shocked. It’s strange and almost painful, his whole body pulling taut under the sensation. When the air shifts over his nipple, Taekwoon cries, wanting to swat it away while also hefting his upper body closer to it. “Shit, oh shit, what the fuck.”

“Fuck, Taekwoon,” Wonshik says, sounding broken in a way Taekwoon adores. “You’re so beautiful. So goddamn beautiful.”

“You’ll never get to heaven with language like that,” Taekwoon taunts, shuddering aggressively as Wonshik traces the air over his ribs, his abdominal muscles, his navel. “I want to take my pants off.”

“Taekwoon, please.”

“I’m taking my fucking pants off; it’s my life,” Taekwoon hisses, quickly fumbling with the button of his jeans and yanking everything off, kicking his jeans and cotton boxers away with his pale feet.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” is Wonshik’s reply, but then there is that brush of icy static over his bare thighs. “Your thighs, Taekwoon. God, your thighs.”

“Yes, I have thighs,” Taekwoon says, spreading his legs more, and he knows he should be embarrassed about being half-hard and bare in an empty room, shuddering for the spirit of a departed blond hoodlum. 

“Touch yourself, Taekwoon.”

“You do it.”

“What if I hurt you?”

“Just try.”

There is the faintest trail of static over his hip bones, and then his cock is twitching and his whole body is seizing up under the light touch at the base of his shaft. 

“Oh...oh fuck,” Taekwoon cries. 

“Bad? Oh shit, Taekwoon, I’m sorry, I’m--”

“Don’t fucking stop, you undead freak-tease,” Taekwoon hisses, bucking up into the empty air, seeking friction. 

“I’m not undead. I’m just dead,” Wonshik reminds him, circling the head of Taekwoon’s cock, dipping into the slit, and it feels like the strangest kind of pressure, like the feeling of goosebumps where his muscles contract all at once and the hair all over his body stands on end. 

Taekwoon nearly screams, biting into his fingers to keep the sound muffled. 

“Is it good?”

“I still can’t really tell, but I like it,” Taekwoon says, writhing on the sheets, dropping his arms over his head. “Here too,” he adds, bending his knees to his chest and baring his ass. 

“Fuck, Taekwoon. Are you always this needy?”

“I wouldn’t be this needy if you hadn’t thrown a bottle at my hookup,” Taekwoon grunts. “Now touch my balls or I’m calling the priests to exorcise you properly.”

“This is blackmail. Sexual blackmail.”

“I’m joking. God, Wonshik, it feels so good, please,” Taekwoon begs, reaching a hand between his thighs to smear the precum over his cock and stroke it slowly, hoping the sight will be enticing enough for Wonshik to touch him again. 

And it works because then there’s a touch at his balls, and Taekwoon has to grip his cock tightly at the base to keep from coming right there. It feels so wrong, so sharp and yet gentle, and Taekwoon has no idea why it feels so damn good, so goddamn good. The touch travels down his perineum, and Taekwoon really does scream. 

Wonshik pulls away again, and Taekwoon shakes. “No, no, I swear, Wonshik, don’t stop. I’ll die if you stop.”

“Don’t joke about death with a ghost,” Wonshik teases, but then air brushes over his crack, circles his hole like a draft under the door in winter, and Taekwoon can’t stop shivering, can’t stop shaking all over. 

He strokes his cock for a few moments more, while the air shifts and crackles over the skin of his balls, his hole, and it’s so gorgeously bad, so gorgeously good that he’s coming, arching, thighs drawing together to try to push away what is continues brushing over him through the aftershocks, but there is nothing to push physically. 

“Too much,” Taekwoon cries, voice cracking as Wonshik’s static pressure just barely, lightly traces the vein up the shaft of his cock as it softens. He cries out again and then sags weakly against the sheets. 

“Are you like this with every sexual partner, or just me especially?”

“What do you mean?” Taekwoon mutters, still breathless, his whole body covered in goosebumps, some of his muscles still twitching under his skin. 

“Bossy and annoying.”

“Shut up. Maybe I was joking about the priests,” Taekwoon hisses, feeling his cum sliding down his hipbones, lukewarm and icky. 

Then his blankets are shifting, sliding up from where they’d been shoved to the edge of the bed in a messy pile so they’re covering Taekwoon’s bare skin. 

“Is this your post-coital aftercare?” Taekwoon jokes. 

“You’re gonna need the real aftercare tomorrow when you wake up and realize you slept with cum on your skin and blanket.”

Taekwoon whimpers but makes no move to leave. His whole body feels sapped of energy. “And you’ll be here...tomorrow?”

“I’m still here now,” Wonshik answers, and Taekwoon looks up, and Wonshik is there. Blurry, faint, like a fuzzy afterimage behind closed eyelids, but Taekwoon’s eyelids are open. 

“You are,” Taekwoon says, offering a weak and tired smile. 

“Jaehwan is still gonna kill me,” Wonshik groans. 

Taekwoon wants to ask who Jaehwan is, but his eyelids are already fluttering closed, his breath evening out as he sleeps. 

 

Wonshik watches Taekwoon sleep, his dark hair spread out over the pillowcase, his eyelashes long and curved over his high cheekbones. He decides after a few moments that he’s being too creepy; he’d finally gotten Taekwoon to admit that he isn’t  _ that _ creepy, so he doesn’t want to jinx that by continuing to stare. 

He shifts into the living room, hovering over the couch and pretending to sit. 

For a moment he tries to zone out like he sometimes does to make time seem to pass more quickly, but there’s this throbbing feeling that feels suspiciously like moving blood under his skin. His belly feels warm and tight in familiar way. He feels heavy. Too heavy to shift. 

In a human way. 

He looks down between his legs, and his cock is pressed up, hard, against the denim of the jeans he was wearing when he’d died. 

“That...can’t be good.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: there are probably only gonna be maybe 2-3 more chapters of this fic, just so y'all know...and shit gets real in this one.
> 
> WARNINGS!!! for this chapter: BLOOD/GRAPHIC VIOLENCE. If you don't like that, just don't read the stuff in italics, honestly. Also, I'm sorry for all the cliffhangers. I treat everything like a comic book because I am garbage. 
> 
> Also also, thanks to all of you who have found me on twitter or left comments. I know I don't reply to comments here, but I still love waking up to them everyday, so bless all of you. If you want to have a real convo with me, though, find me on twitter @likesatellitez

This time there isn’t a blackout, and Wonshik isn’t torn from the plane to be reprimanded. 

This time Jaehwan just appears on top of Taekwoon’s coffee table, clutching a gigantic fuzzy ball of black fur. 

“Um, I can explain?” Wonshik slurs.

Jaehwan sets the ball of fur down, and Wonshik realizes it’s a cat. An absolutely massive cat. Fur sticking out every which way, glowing green eyes, paws the size of human fists. Wonshik is momentarily distracted by the cat (that leaps up to the ceiling and hangs like a bat from the ceiling fan), which is how Jaehwan manages to clamber on top of him on the couch, hands wrapped around Wonshik’s throat, throttling him--gently.

“Jae--Jaehwan-- _ Jaehwan _ \--” Wonshik wheezes, pawing desperately at Jaehwan’s white suit.

“Just because I gave you three more strikes doesn’t mean you just  _ go out and flagrantly disobey me right when you get back _ ,” Jaehwan screeches.

“Jae--please--I’m--” Wonshik chokes, as Jaehwan’s knee collides with his now-clearly-painful ghost erection.

Jaehwan seems to suddenly realize what has Wonshik so alarmed. He shifts his leg, and Wonshik utters a small, weary  _ meep _ .

“Wonshik, you, uh,” Jaehwan mutters, gazing down curiously at Wonshik’s lap.

“Don’t say it please don’t say it,” Wonshik pleads, moving his hands up to cup his palms protectively over his eyes, as if somehow not seeing Jaehwan will mean Jaehwan cannot see him and his physiologically impossible boner.

“Wonshik this is not good,” Jaehwan says, slipping a hand between their bodies to poke a softly glowing pale finger at Wonshik’s dick. 

Wonshik flails and shoves Jaehwan over to the side of the couch away from him. “Please do not inspect my erection.”

“You should not even  _ have _ an erection, Wonshik, you are dead,” Jaehwan reminds him, as if Wonshik has forgotten.

“You say that like I’ve forgotten that I’m fucking dead,” Wonshik counters defensively. “I know that I’m fucking dead. And I know that I should not have blood moving in my circulatory system nor in my junk, okay?”

“You don’t have blood at all, Wonshik. That’s the thing. You’re a soul. Your body is gone. It’s condensed into ash in some sort of decorative jar in a mausoleum somewhere in downtown Seoul,” Jaehwan replies, crawling over again to just stare in bewilderment at Wonshik’s crotch. Luckily, Jaehwan’s ardent gaze seems to make it wilt enough to be less noticeable. Jaehwan seems somewhat put out about that.

“How is it that I have a boner then? Aren’t you supposed to be all-knowing?”

“I know very little, honestly, aside from guiding people to the great beyond... and Hakyeon,” Jaehwan admits, rubbing sheepishly at the back of his neck. 

“Well I don’t need to know about either of those things.”

“I can tell you a lot about Hakyeon.”

“Again, not very helpful right now, Jae,” Wonshik grumbles, grabbing one of Taekwoon’s throw pillows and covering his crotch. “Can you ask someone higher-up what this ghost erection means so I can stop freaking out?”

“I am going to just go ahead and say that knowing the source of your… ‘ghost erection’ is only going to make you panic more,” Jaehwan says, grimacing. “There are only two explanations I can think of. One is that your soul remembers the sensation of having a boner from when you were human and simulated it in this form, and the other is that you...once again...somehow phased into this realm for enough time for your body to...you know.”

“Rush blood I don’t have to my dick.”

“Sure.”

“Jaehwan, do angels even have sex?” Wonshik asks, skeptically arching a brow. 

Jaehwan puffs air into his cheeks and releases it through his lips like a rapidly deflating balloon. “It is...possible...for angels to have sex, yes.”

Wonshik eyes him suspiciously. “Why do you say it like that?”

Jaehwan shrugs. “It isn’t strictly speaking necessary for angels to have sex. There is no biological impulse like there is for humans. We don’t reproduce sexually, and we don’t have primal instincts because we are perfect. We are just created perfect.”

“Okay, so why would an angel fuck if not for a biological impulse?”

“Well, when you spend your entire existence observing humans, you get curious. You get, well,  _ envious _ .”

“Envious of how we get naked and insert parts into one another and flop around all sweaty?”

“Envious of how you  _ feel _ something so base, so primal,” Jaehwan replies, pointedly ignoring Wonshik. “There is an intimacy and connection through sex that angels don’t experience. Sometimes the idea of imperfect, unnecessary acts of the body intrigue us.”

“So you guys watch humans fuck and get jealous, so you try to fuck,” Wonshik says, working through Jaehwan’s explanation. 

“We are made in man’s image. What you can do, we can do,” Jaehwan retorts. 

“So you and Hakyeon--”

Jaehwan splutters and rises to his feet. “I will not, as you humans say,  _ sex and gossip _ .”

“Kiss and tell?”

Jaehwan huffs loudly.

“I’ve seen Hakyeon naked, Jae, I wouldn’t blame you at all for trying to get in that,” Wonshik says, and Jaehwan leaps onto him again, fisting into his hair and jostling him around.

“I should have let you drown in the void!”

There’s suddenly a loud squeak as Taekwoon’s rusty door hinges shift. The door creaks open, and then Taekwoon is peeking his head out, face flushed from sleep, cheek marked up from his rumpled pillowcase.

“What’s all the noise?” he grumbles, pawing at his eyes with an overlong sweater, just the tips of his fingers hanging out. After a moment, his vision seems to clear, and he stops blinking, eyes wide and terrified. 

“Wonshik, can he see me?” Jaehwan hisses nervously out of the corner of his mouth.

Wonshik groans.

“I do see you, and I’m wondering why you’re in my apartment. Wonshik, do you know him? This...glowy man?” 

Jaehwan rises swiftly to his feet and strides over to Taekwoon with a hand extended. “Hello, yes, Taekwoon, I am Wonshik’s friend.”

Wonshik snorts on the couch. “What a bizarrely formal introduction, ‘friend’.”

Taekwoon looks down at Jaehwan’s hand as if he’d just stuck his whole arm into a vat of boiling acid. “I see. And you’re here in my apartment, why?”

Jaehwan’s smile doesn’t falter. “I come to check up on him sometimes. Wonshik. My friend.”

“Are you also a ghost? Why doesn’t Wonshik glow?” Taekwoon casts a disappointed glance over at Wonshik, and Wonshik feels momentarily self-conscious of his lack of powerful glow.

“I’m not a ghost,” Jaehwan says, almost offended. “I’m an angel of death.”

Taekwoon takes a hasty step backwards, looking now as if Jaehwan had taken a shit on Taekwoon’s hand directly. 

“Oh, don’t worry; I’m not here for you,” Jaehwan laughs, waving a hand in the air like a limp noodle. “I’m here to yell at Wonshik for attempting to...fornicate with you.”

Taekwoon’s whole body seems to have been dunked in tomato juice or red paint. His mouth falls open, and he stammers, “He--I--we--what? How do you?”

Jaehwan just laughs again, turns back around to face Wonshik, gives him an absolutely horrifying disdainful sneer, and then poofs away. 

Wonshik, now completely boner-less due to fear, stands to move towards Taekwoon, but Taekwoon is distracted, eyes on his ceiling.

“Is that,” he says, lifting a shaky finger to point up, “my dead cat?”

Wonshik follows the line of Taekwoon’s arm and winces. Jaehwan left the ghost cat.

“Jaehwan brought it with him. I have no idea why, oh God, Taekwoon, I’m sorry, I--”

“Princess!” Taekwoon cries, arms lifted to the ceiling, tongue clicking. “C’mere baby girl, c’mere.”

The ghost cat, hovering by the ceiling fan, batting at the blades with its massive paws, turns its terrifying gaze to Taekwoon. It utters a horrifyingly deep mewl and leaps down to hover on Taekwoon’s shoulder like a pirate parrot. 

Wonshik, aghast, repeats, “Princess??”

Taekwoon looks over at him from above the jungle of fur around the black cat’s head as the cat inspects Taekwoon’s ear with its black nose.  

“She was really small when I got her, to be fair,” Taekwoon replies, pouting when his hand phases through the spine of Princess’s back. 

“What did you feed her? Spinach?”

Taekwoon’s brows come together in confusion. “What? No. She’s a fucking cat.”

“I mean, like, like the cartoon? Popeye? No?”

Taekwoon’s expression doesn’t change, so Wonshik glances away nervously. 

“So that Jaehwan is? Actually your friend or no?” 

Princess starts jumping around the air in the living room, climbing invisible stairs and then pouncing down them over and over. 

Taekwoon seems equal parts endeared and terrified. 

“He’s the angel who brought me back here. To give me a chance…” Wonshik finds the words don’t stick in his mouth like they used to. Probably another bad sign. “To find who killed me. So I can move on.”

“How’s that going for you so far?” 

“So far the only thing I’ve discovered is you,” Wonshik admits.

Taekwoon steps closer, and Wonshik finds himself wishing he’d become incorporeal again because he’s so afraid so so afraid of how badly he wants Taekwoon’s hands on him. “What about me?”

Wonshik shakes his head. “Taekwoon, you don’t understand.”

“You’re right,” Taekwoon snips, “I don’t understand. This is all fucked up. But you’re the only semi-pleasant thing I’ve experienced in a while, Wonshik, and I just want to pretend for once that things are okay.”

Wonshik takes the plunge. 

Taekwoon’s hand is warm and smooth and kind of fucking huge in a strangely comforting way as Wonshik reaches for it, closes his own hand around it. Taekwoon looks down at their hands locked together and offers a little smile. 

“You feel so real right now.”

Wonshik hates how that makes something pure and sweet and thick bloom in his chest. “But I’m not.”

“We can pretend.” And then Taekwoon is leaning in and his lips are so impossibly soft and plush and yet so small and Wonshik can’t do anything but squeeze Taekwoon’s hand and kiss back.

Wonshik feels like if he could cry he would. He knows that crying is reserved for three occasions. Your birth, your death, and the first time you fall in love. 

Taekwoon is the only thing Wonshik knows, and part of him wonders if the only reason he feels this connection is because there is some magical tie between Wonshik and this apartment. Or if Wonshik has some strange Stockholm Syndrome of loving the only kind figure in the absolute loneliness of haunting. Or if maybe Wonshik is just doomed to have his first love be someone he can never have a future with because he has no future. He doesn’t even have a past. Wonshik is like Jaehwan now. He just  _ is _ . And who knows what will happen when he moves on. Will he even  _ be  _ anymore?

Taekwoon seems to sense Wonshik’s thought change, and he pulls Wonshik tightly to his chest. “Please just pretend with me for a bit, okay?”

Wonshik nods, his nose tucked in against Taekwoon’s warm throat. “Okay.”

 

Sanghyuk comes over after work a few days later. He spends twenty minutes inspecting each room like a manga detective before settling down on the edge of Taekwoon’s bed with him. 

“I’m just worried,” he says.

Taekwoon scoffs. “You and Hongbin need to stop saying that. It’s been months now, and I’m fucking fine.”

“You don’t seem fine, Taek. You seem like you’re crumbling.”

“Crumbling isn’t a word meant for people. It’s meant for biscuits,” Taekwoon replies bitterly, and Sanghyuk drops his hand onto Taekwoon’s knee.

Wonshik, perched on Taekwoon’s dresser, glares at the contact, but Sanghyuk can’t see him. Taekwoon just rolls his eyes. 

“Regardless, you seem like you haven’t slept in weeks. You seem like you’re not really eating. You barely text me or Bean lately,” Sanghyuk says, a hint of a whine creeping into his voice. “We miss you.”

“Aren’t you guys busy, I dunno, gangbanging with Chanshik and not telling me?” Taekwoon sneers.

Sanghyuk plops his forehead onto Taekwoon’s shoulder, nuzzling into his black wool sweater. “Please, hyung, you know we didn’t mean anything by it. Bean was just worried. He was worried about, about--”

“About hurting my feelings? God, you’re both idiots. How do you think me just accidentally discovering this trist made me feel? It just felt like he was rejecting me for months, despite how pathetically, pitifully I begged for him, and then suddenly I see you three leaving the party together in a heap of sex and what am I supposed to think, Hyuk?”

Sanghyuk puffs out his bottom lip and grips Taekwoon’s thigh with both hands, shaking it like a child who can only explain with physicality. “We didn’t mean it like that, Taek. Hongbin was worried that you would take it personally, but it was my fault. I confessed to him first. I said, I mean, I told him that I’ve liked him for years, Taekwoon. I’ve liked him so long, since he had that horrible haircut with the asymmetrical bangs over his eyes, over his really nice eyes, you know? And I know you two had a thing, but I couldn’t just sit with these feelings forever. I had to do something, Taek.”

Taekwoon presses his lips together and offers only a nod. “And...Chansik?”

Sanghyuk puffs out a laugh. “That was kind of an accident, I guess. Turns out Chansik and I both had repressed feelings for Bean, and we ended up confessing just hours apart, and Bean was really overwhelmed at first, and I know he wanted to talk to you about it because you’re his best friend, but he was scared. He didn’t have anyone to talk to and--”

From across the room comes Wonshik’s: “Maybe if he hadn’t slept with all his best friends then--” 

Taekwoon lifts an angry gaze in Wonshik’s direction, and his mouth clamps shut.

“Just making a casual observation.”

Taekwoon rolls his eyes again and turns back to Sanghyuk. “Listen, Hyuk, I’m not mad that you guys are fucking. I’m not that petty. I’m mad that you just figured telling me would be worse than me knowing. It’s just...cowardly, honestly.”

“Well, what about you, huh?” Sanghyuk counters. 

“What? What about me?”

Sanghyuk narrows his eyes. “You never leave your apartment except to go to work. Something is wrong, isn’t it? But you won’t tell us.”

Taekwoon shakes his head. “I’m fine. There’s nothin--”

“It’s the fucking ghost, isn’t it? What did he tell you? Did he...did he say something to you?” Sanghyuk is visibly shaking now, and the change was so sudden, so stark, and Sanghyuk’s hands are clenching into Taekwoon’s thigh. It hurts, it hurts, so Taekwoon grabs his hands and holds them tightly. 

“Hyuk, stop,” Taekwoon coos, gently prying Sanghyuk’s shaking hands from his thigh and holding them. “It’s okay. I’m fine. I’m just...working through some shit.”

Sanghyuk relaxes a little but still has his gaze rolling around the room, searching for something. “Don’t believe what it tells you, Taekwoon. It’s evil. Ghosts are evil.”

Taekwoon pulls Sanghyuk to his chest and rubs gingerly at his back. “It’s okay. Hey, shh, listen: it’s okay.”

And Sanghyuk goes limp in Taekwoon’s hold, his arms wound around Taekwoon’s waist, his head tucked to Taekwoon’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, hyung. I’m so sorry.”

“I forgive you, Hyukkie. I know you only lied to...I dunno, protect my feelings or some shit.”

Sanghyuk just keeps shaking his head, and Taekwoon feels the telltale wetness of tears on his collar. 

“I’m so sorry, hyung, I’m so, so fucking sorry. Please promise me you don’t hate me, that you’ll never hate me.”

Taekwoon chuckles, just a quiet hum of laughter against Sanghyuk’s head. “I don’t hate you.”

“And you won’t ever?”

“I won’t ever.”

 

Another week goes by, and Wonshik refuses to touch Taekwoon. Just because Jaehwan gave him the strikes doesn’t mean he should use them. Taekwoon seems particularly miffed about this, constantly trying to grab Wonshik down from the ceiling when he hovers there in his mist of ectoplasmic dust. 

Tonight, Taekwoon is swatting at the cloud of Wonshik Mist with a butterfly net, and Wonshik is booming from his swirl of nothingness: “YOU CAN’T CATCH MY SOUL IN A BUTTERFLY NET.”

Taekwoon drops to his butt on his mattress and curls up into a ball. “I’m mad.”

Wonshik just scoffing. “I can see that. You tried to ensnare my whole self into a children’s toy.”

“You said you would pretend to be real for me.”

“I only have so many chances, Taekwoon.” And then Wonshik is phasing into being again, kneeling on the bed behind Taekwoon’s crumpled form.

“Can’t you just kiss me and let me deal with Jaehwan? I’m not scared of him. I could probably take him in a fight.”

“It isn’t just Jaehwan, Taekwoon. There are...forces...beyond his control.”

There is something achingly desperate in the way Taekwoon rolls over to face Wonshik, his features open and honest and needy, and Wonshik wants nothing more than to place his hands on Taekwoon’s face and smooth away the lines of frustration dug deep into Taekwoon’s forehead. 

“Why do you want this so badly, Taekwoon?” 

Taekwoon blinks once, slowly, before rising up to kneel in front of Wonshik, mirroring his pose in the center of the mattress, his hands on his knees, and he says, “Because I’ve never had anything completely before.”

Wonshik tilts his head, watching the way Taekwoon flicks his fringe from his eyes and licks at his lips. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ve had friends, but I’ve never had best friends. I’ve had lovers, but I’ve never been in love. I’ve had jobs, but I’ve never been particularly good at anything. I’ve never  _ had _ anything, and nothing ever  _ had  _ me.”

“You say that like I’m a pet. Like I’m Princess,” Wonshik grumbles, but Taekwoon shakes his head and tentatively cups Wonshik’s jaw in his big soft hands, and Wonshik lets himself phase into the touch, lets himself feel it and want it and need it, and it feels like Taekwoon is everywhere, just surrounding him completely. 

“I don’t know if I only want you because you’re here, and you’re handsome, and you’re kind,” Taekwoon admits, “but I do know that I feel something when you touch me (even when you touch me across realms somehow) that I’ve never felt before. I want to give myself to you in a way I never let myself before.”

“You mean like…” Wonshik mimes his pointer finger entering the hole of his opposite thumb and pointer finger coming together.

Taekwoon swats at his hand grumpily. “No, you neanderthal. I mean I want you to love me. I want to learn to love you.”

“Why? I’m not  _ real _ , Taekwoon.”

“I don’t  _ know _ ,” Taekwoon grits out, throwing his arms up in frustration. “Does anyone know why they want anything? I want ice cream, I want barbeque, I want cheese--”

“These are all foods, Taekwoon.”

“And I want you.”

“I’m not real,” Wonshik repeats, breathlessly. “I have nothing to give you.”

“But you’re here. You’re here and you  _ are  _ real,” Taekwoon observes, stroking his hands down Wonshik’s throat, and Wonshik feels it, he really feels it, and Gods it feels so fucking good to feel again, to have someone to feel and be felt by. 

“We can’t, Taekwoon, we can’t.”

Taekwoon rakes his hands into Wonshik’s hair and pulls, and Wonshik feels the strands to the roots like they’re really there, and he feels the pain twinge in his gut like it’s really there, and the pain slithers down his spinal cord like he really has one, and then he’s feeling the heated tug of pleasure coiling in his gut again. 

“Fuck,” he gasps, mirroring the motion with Taekwoon, fisting into his silky strands of dark hair and yanking, and Taekwoon falls into him so easily, begging for it, and their lips find each other like they’re both so real and so here and it feels, it  _ feels _ , it feels so  _ good _ . 

There’s a moment when Taekwoon’s lips find his jawline, pressing hot openmouth kisses to Wonshik’s skin, when Wonshik is afraid he’s being torn from the realm again because something flickers behind his eyelids, something dark, and Wonshik gasps into Taekwoon’s mouth. 

Taekwoon takes it as a sign of Wonshik’s pleasure and licks between his lips, and Wonshik wants to know what he tastes like because tasting like anything shouldn’t be possible but it could be. And Taekwoon tastes like Wonshik always knew he’d taste. He tastes like espresso and faint toothpaste and instant noodles and kimchi and Wonshik wants to map out all the tastes of Taekwoon’s skin the way he’d wanted to since the first time he saw Taekwoon standing before him in all his bare beauty. 

There’s a flicker again, and Wonshik grips into Taekwoon’s shirt and tugs at it, fighting against the darkness behind his eyelids. Taekwoon’s shirt falls to the bed beside them, and then Wonshik’s shirt is there too, and Taekwoon’s hands are on his skin. Taekwoon’s hands. Gods, they’re so soft and so large and they span the width of his hips and hold Wonshik so firmly and greedily like he really can’t get enough of Wonshik’s entire body. 

Wonshik can’t stop kissing Taekwoon. He doesn’t think he could if he wanted to. Even despite the strange sensation rolling through his skull like one annoyingly persistent movie reel rolling over a screen and interrupting another, Wonshik can still feel Taekwoon as he presses Wonshik’s back to the mattress and climbs over him, lips on Wonshik’s sternum, his stomach, his navel, his hips. 

Wonshik doesn’t know if he’s ever felt so alive, which is kind of sad, really, because he’s dead. 

No sooner does his brain process that thought than the faint flickering behind his eyelids becomes something vivid, something consuming. 

Taekwoon’s hands are tugging down Wonshik’s pants, reaching for the warm pulsing skin of his cock, but Wonshik can’t open his eyes, and he wants to see. He wants to see Taekwoon flicking his little pink tongue over the slit of Wonshik’s cock and humming like he’s never seen anything so perfect in his life but then Wonshik is hearing words in his head, ringing, shaking, shuddering words. 

_ “Why couldn’t you just get it to him on time? Ravi, please, I don’t want to do this.”  _ And the voice is so familiar.  _ “He’s going to be here any minute and I don’t--oh fuck, oh fuck, Ravi, we’re so fucked, he’s here and--”  _

And another voice. One Wonshik doesn’t recognize as easily. But it twists something sharp in Wonshik’s gut, even as Taekwoon envelopes his cock in tight wet heat, Wonshik’s back bowing off the bed as he claws at the sheets. 

“Open your eyes, Wonshik,” Taekwoon begs, and Wonshik wants to, he wants to so badly, but now there are faces behind his eyelids, faces Wonshik knows. “Do ghosts not have precum?”

_ “I gave you forty-eight hours, Ravi,” the unfamiliar voice says. “Forty-eight hours to provide what you owed me.” _

_ Wonshik realizes now there’s a blade pressed to his throat and breath that isn’t Taekwoon’s against his ear. He looks.  _

_ “Just keep quiet, okay?” the familiar voice whispers against the shell of Wonshik’s ear, and oh fuck, it’s Sanghyuk. It’s Sanghyuk. Taekwoon’s Sanghyuk, who was also Wonshik’s Sanghyuk through business association, though he didn’t know his real name then. “We can talk him down.” _

_ The unfamiliar man steps closer, and Wonshik realizes they’re in Taekwoon’s apartment--his apartment. His features are clear now. Angular face, sharp eyes, teeth somehow almost too big for his small mouth. He’s handsome. A name appears through the fog in Wonshik’s brain. _

_ Bobby.  _

_ “I don’t have it,” Wonshik in the vision says.  _

_ “Bullshit.” _

_ There are hands on Sanghyuk’s, the ones on the handle of the knife, and then the tip of the blade is pressing against Wonshik’s throat, just over his jugular.  _

_ “Bobby, please, you know me. You know I always pull through. You can’t just...and don’t--” he casts a look over at Sanghyuk, poor little Sanghyuk with his shaking hands on the knife, his eyes wide and terrified and haunted. “Don’t make the kid do it. If you want to punish me, do it yourself, you fucking coward.” _

_ Bobby tips the blade in closer, and Wonshik feels the blood dripping down the side of his neck, and fuck he’s scared. He’s really fucking scared. It’s like his skin is crawling to escape his body, his organs rebelling and trying to flee through his pores as he sweats through his fear, but he’s trapped beneath the knife blade, beneath Bobby and Sanghyuk’s hands.  _

_ “Just chill out and tell me where it is,” Bobby says, mouth an even line. _

_ “If I tell you, will you not fucking kill me?” _

_ “I’ll think about it.” _

_ “It’s in the apartment,” Wonshik says. “It’s...it’s behind the fridge. In the wall. Under some patched drywall. I swear it’s there, it’s--”  _

_ A look passes over Bobby’s face, his eyes dark, his face cast in shadow. A smirk, triumphant, pleased, resigned. _

_ And then the world stops and there’s nothing but searing pain in Wonshik’s abdomen. His chest. Over and over. Two hands gripping the blade, one trying to pull it away, a voice screaming and pleading and crying, the other pushing the blade back in over and over until Wonshik can’t feel anything, and maybe this is like what hypothermia is supposed to feel like, except he heard hypothermia was pleasant, and this is just like having his entire body engulfed in flames or maybe dropped in a vat of acid, and Wonshik can’t believe this is happening, he can’t believe he’s really dying, pressed against the kitchen cabinets in his own apartment.  _

_ Sanghyuk, bent over him on the floor, sobbing, his cheeks smeared with blood as he tries to press Wonshik’s blood back into his body, maybe bits of Wonshik’s insides too, he can’t tell. His whole body is screeching at him to just let go, but Sanghyuk is trying to talk to him, even as Bobby yanks at his collar to pull him away.  _

_ “Ravi, hyung, I’m sorry, I didn’t think, I didn’t, I was trapped, I didn’t mean to, and oh fuck, oh fuck, please don’t die, please I can’t be a murderer, I can’t have killed you, how the fuck am I supposed to--” _

And then Wonshik is back beneath Taekwoon, though Taekwoon has pulled back, his expression lost and confused.

“Am I that bad?” he murmurs, thumbing at the tear tracks on Wonshik’s cheekbones.

“What? Oh, fuck, no,” Wonshik says, hastily sitting up against the headboard, rubbing his tears away with the heels of his palms. “I--” The tears keep coming though, and Wonshik feels the ghost of the pain singing beneath his skin, reminding him where his muscles and veins and everything had torn beneath the blade in Sanghyuk’s hand. It hurts and Wonshik pushes it away because that pain isn’t here. It isn’t his. 

He’s with Taekwoon now. He’s real and here, and Taekwoon is bare and perfect in his lap where he sits against the headboard of Taekwoon’s bed. 

“It just feels so good,” Wonshik lies, gripping at Taekwoon’s sharp hips and rolling his body down against his own. “You feel so good.”

Taekwoon smiles, and it is so stunning and lovely and perfect, his white little teeth barely peeking out from under his plush pink lips, and Wonshik allows himself to smile back because the pain is gone. It isn’t his pain. He is Taekwoon’s. 

Taekwoon has a little bottle in his hand, and Wonshik realizes Taekwoon’s hands are shaking. 

“I haven’t,” he mutters, “had this in a while. I haven’t had,” he pauses, flushing at the tips of his ears, “anyone inside me, I mean.”

Wonshik feels all the breath leaving his lungs, breath he shouldn’t have, breath he  _ doesn’t _ have. “Do you want that? You want me inside you?” 

Wonshik’s chest is heaving with that same breath he doesn’t have, and Taekwoon is nodding, leaning down to kiss Wonshik so tentatively and adorably, and Wonshik is weak and helpless to the power of it.

“Please,” Taekwoon says. 

Wonshik is powerless, really, beneath the comforting weight of Taekwoon’s body (that he can feel), the heat of the bare soft skin of Taekwoon’s ass against his thighs (that Wonshik can feel), the way his hips move down to meet Wonshik’s (that Wonshik can feel), the way Taekwoon guides Wonshik’s fingers back behind his body, sliding wetly over Taekwoon’s balls, his perineum, and then Wonshik feels his skin enveloped in tight slick heat. 

“Fuck, Taekwoon,” Wonshik finally pants, starkly intimate minutes of silence later, when he has three fingers buried in Taekwoon’s body, and Taekwoon is rocking down over them like he’s on a fucking mission, and Wonshik can’t look away. 

There are trails of sweat trickling down Taekwoon’s chest, in the hollows of his clavicles, shining on his thighs as he lifts himself up and down. 

“Hurry,” Taekwoon pleads, tugging at Wonshik’s wrist to slip his fingers free, and Taekwoon hisses at the loss. “Kiss me and take me and fuck me. Now,” he says, biting at his lip a moment before adding: “please.”

Wonshik is helpless.

Taekwoon curves down against him, lips sweet and urgent, and his hand is wrapped around Wonshik’s cock, guiding it into that tight slick heat, and Wonshik knows deep in his core that this shouldn’t be happening. Shouldn’t be possible.

But he is real. 

Taekwoon says he is. 

And he can feel everything so vividly, so it must be real.

Why would the forces that be, why would the universe let him feel this good, this goddamn magnificent, if he weren’t supposed to? Did the Gods create the ship knowing they also created the shipwreck? Is that what this is, Wonshik wonders, simultaneously something so good and beautiful and seemingly perfect and also something so dangerous and disastrous and--

“Fuck, Wonshik,” Taekwoon purrs in that gentle calm voice, the tone pitching higher as he seats himself fully on Wonshik’s cock. 

Wonshik knows he shouldn’t have this. It isn’t his to have. He had his chance, but he’s dead, and he isn’t really here.

But he  _ is _ , whispers that stronger voice, the one that pumps his hips up to get Taekwoon to mewl and fall forward against his chest, holding on tightly as Wonshik’s cock pounds into him from below.

The voice that tells Wonshik he deserves this. Taekwoon is his. He deserves this pleasure and this warmth and this  _ feeling _ . He shouldn’t have died in the first place. He is real and here with Taekwoon, and Taekwoon needs him, and he has to stay. He has to stay. 

Taekwoon’s lips find his again, needy and parting on whimpers and moans that Wonshik wishes he could drink down from a shotglass, and Wonshik hears him breathing, “Touch me, Wonshik, touch me, I want to feel your hands.”

And Wonshik has to give that to him. His hands, real and firm and  _ human _ , wrapping around Taekwoon’s cock, twisting on the upstroke to hear Taekwoon cry out. He fists his free hand in Taekwoon’s hair where he’s bent over Wonshik’s body, hips lifted up to allow Wonshik to rut up into him frantically. And Taekwoon seems to revel in it, trapped between the hand in his hair and the hand on his cock.

“I’m gonna,” Taekwoon stutters, nails digging into Wonshik’s chest like a lifeline, “don’t stop, please don’t stop.”

Wonshik feels the twist of pleasure in his gut, but it doesn’t feel imminent, not nearly as imminent as Taekwoon’s release feels, as his muscles clench down around Wonshik’s cock. 

“You’re so beautiful, so fucking beautiful,” Wonshik babbles, as Taekwoon lifts his eyes to meet Wonshik’s, and Taekwoon’s whole body shakes, his thighs twitching and pulling together as his cock pulses over and over on Wonshik’s hand. 

Wonshik feels the pleasure washing over him as Taekwoon shudders around him, feels the familiar sensation of it suddenly bursting like a cut rubber band springing back, but there is no throb, no pulse, no real release. He feels it, the ghost of an orgasm in his body, and then Taekwoon is falling forward against his chest, cheek pillowed against the tan skin. 

Wonshik shuts his eyes and feels frustration, annoyance, bitterness simmering in his blood. 

“I shouldn’t be dead,” Wonshik says, after a moment, his body recreating the sensation of aftershocks as he holds Taekwoon’s sweat-slick body against his own.

Taekwoon sighs against Wonshik’s neck, pressing a kiss to his skin. “You don’t taste like anything. Did you...did you cum?”

“I did,” Wonshik says, because it isn’t untrue. But the anger still builds to a roiling wave that drops down over Wonshik’s body and sinks into everything. “I shouldn’t be dead.”

Taekwoon gives a little creaky yawn. “I wish you weren’t.”

 

Taekwoon wakes with the sun, and there’s something burning him. 

He rolls over onto his mattress and realizes he’d fallen asleep on Wonshik’s chest. He reaches out, touches the pads of his fingers to Wonshik’s ribs. The skin is feverish beneath his hand. Taekwoon yanks his hand back, terrified. Wonshik shouldn’t be hot. He shouldn’t be  _ asleep _ .

“Wonshik,” he says, tapping at Wonshik’s cheek. “Wake up.”

Wonshik’s eyelids flutter before opening. He lifts his head and gives Taekwoon a breathtakingly sleepy but beautiful smile. 

Taekwoon smiles back before his eyes flicker up from Wonshik’s lips to meet Wonshik’s gaze. 

“Wonshik, you--” he breaks off, scrambling from the bed, pressing himself against the wall like a mouse in a maze.

“Taek, what?” Wonshik sits up, and there’s a moment of clarity, his features twisting as he realizes something is wrong, something is really fucking wrong.

“I’m...alive?”

Taekwoon shakes his head, heart hammering against his chest, threatening to shatter his ribs. “Your eyes.”

Wonshik stands in front of Taekwoon’s bedroom mirror, his hands on his face, leaning in close, before he turns back around to give Taekwoon a smile, one that Taekwoon now sees is somehow sinister, somehow different from the way Wonshik had smiled at him last night.

“Well, this isn’t  _ alive _ , but I’m not gonna complain.”

His eyes are red, and not a bloodshot redness crossing the whites of his eyes. Red in the iris. A glowing, searing blood red. The skin around his eyes is bruised and purple and blue and black. Taekwoon’s gaze drops to Wonshik’s bare skin, and his knees buckle, making him reach for the edge of his mattress.

“Wonshik, you-- Oh  _ Gods _ \--”

Wonshik’s gorgeous warm-toned abdomen is riddled with gashes, deep, seeping, bleeding gashes. In his chest, his stomach, his body seeming to be trying to spill out the front of him. 

Taekwoon screams. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: warnings for this chapter: blood, minor violence...um...sadness? This is the last chapter before the epilogue. I hope you don't all hate me. I'm incapable of writing a bad ending, so don't fret. I really hope you guys enjoy. I tried really hard to give these characters the ending they deserve. Come find me on twitter to yell at me @likesatellitez

Taekwoon remembers the first time he was aware of fear. Aware that there is a state of balance in his body, in his universe (as his body is his entire universe, especially when you’re that young), and that something had altered that balance. Ruined it. 

He probably didn't realize what fear was yet, only that he wasn't safe. There is that feeling, like everything that holds your body upright, and not just a skeletal system, you know, like  _ everything _ , just everything inside, all of it, as if the will to stand were something physical that lingered under your skin like your bones.

He remembers when he was six and his cat, a small black tabby with white mitten paws (Captain, was her name, because Taekwoon had a dream she had her own pirate ship of felines), slipped out through the broken screen door of his house. Taekwoon came home from school and there was no soft mewling from behind the door, which there always was when she sensed him coming home. And that was it. Taekwoon knew. He didn't even have to see it to know what he was feeling. It was like a rawness, an exposure. Like being held underwater for just a second too long, and you know that the breath you'd taken just moments ago was probably actually your last and you really wish you'd tried a bit harder to inhale.

Taekwoon knows that a missing cat and a demon are two different fears to have. The cat was found, Taekwoon realizes, and the fear that he'd felt disappeared so quickly, the relief flooding and instant, and Taekwoon wonders why he forgets that feeling. No one seems to remember the easy sensations of pleasant emotions. It is much easier to recall that bitterness on his tongue. That murmur in his chest that told him things were never going to be okay.

"Taekwoon," Wonshik is saying, but Taekwoon keeps shaking his head. This isn't right. This isn't right.

"Why? Why?" he's replying, though he isn't really replying at all.

"Taekwoon, it's fine. I'm fine, see?" and then there are hands on Taekwoon's bare skin, on his waist and his stomach, and oh Taekwoon wants to lean into those hands that feel so real and human and hot with blood, but he can't. He lurches away and pulls himself into the corner of the room.

"Wonshik, please don’t, don’t; this is so fucked," Taekwoon whimpers, fumbling for his cellphone on his dresser. It drops into his lap, and he quickly pulls up Hongbin's number (emergency contact #1) and dials.

"Hey," Wonshik says, dropping down in front of Taekwoon like he can make this all okay, and Taekwoon refuses to open his eyes, just shakily holding his cellphone up to his cheek and taking shallow breaths. "I'm real now. I'm human."

"You're far from human," Taekwoon hisses, knowing that if he opens his eyes, he'll see it all again. See the evidence, clearly, that Wonshik hasn't been human, hasn't been alive, all this time. There must be something about being a ghost (he supposes that souls don't have bodies, so the knife wounds wouldn't bleed through to something that cannot bleed), and the corruption of Wonshik's soul, the urge to become human again, tried to fuse Wonshik's soul to what must have remained of his corporeal form before it was cremated.

"I did this," Wonshik says, looking down at his skin with eyes wide, awed. "So I can protect you."

"I'm not sure you understand the situation," Taekwoon whines, hearing Hongbin's call go to voicemail. He tries Sanghyuk (emergency contact #2). "You're a fucking demon, and I want you to go the fuck away now."

"You can't just kick me out," Wonshik grumbles, "I figured after last night--"

"Oh, don't 'last night' me, you bastard. Last night you weren't a damn demon, so anything that happened 'last night' is null. Got it? Null. God, I wish Jaehwan had a cell phone," Taekwoon says, grimacing as Sanghyuk's call also goes to voicemail.

They're probably fucking.

Those lecherous twits.

"Can't you just kiss me again? I think that'll make everything better," Wonshik says, and Taekwoon's chest aches to do just that, aches to respond to that familiar deep voice that pitches lower when he wants something Taekwoon can offer him. Wonshik is real, he's solid, and Taekwoon can't have him anymore. 

After all that, after all  _ that _ .

"I need Jaehwan, I need Jaehwan, please," Taekwoon groans, hiding his face in his hands and wanting to crawl under his bed, but it’s just this side of too small for his body.

"Why do you need Jae? Taekwoon, please look at me," Wonshik pleads, and Taekwoon finally relents, finally pries open his eyelids.

Wonshik's eyes are glowing, the deep amber red now a bright, backlit halo of red, like a flashlight shining down a dark hallway. Like a hollow light. There's a tug behind that light, like some kind of gravity, like Taekwoon is a small satellite that can't seem to pull away from the heaviness, from the mass of Wonshik in front of him. He falls forward into Wonshik's arms. Wonshik winds them around his waist and the grip is just this side of too hard with all its desperation.

"Kiss me," Wonshik says, voice a low growl, and Taekwoon relents again.

Wonshik's lips are dry, cracked, but they're warm and alive, and Taekwoon hates how good it feels, how it feels like Wonshik is drinking him in like a man who can’t wait for his coffee to cool. Taekwoon presses back against the wall, and Wonshik takes and takes and takes, and Taekwoon just tips his head back and parts his lips. Wonshik licks into his open mouth, and Taekwoon can feel his hands again, can feel Wonshik inside him, but this time it feels like he’s emptying. Instead of that sweet fullness he’d felt with Wonshik buried inside him, it now feels like he’s being drained. Like Wonshik is somehow drawing energy from--

_ Fuck _ .

Taekwoon shoves Wonshik back, and he lands on the carpet, held up by his forearms. Taekwoon leaps onto the bed on his hands and knees and clambers over to the other side.

"You're a fucking demon, and I'm not giving you my lifeforce!" Taekwoon cries, having read enough paranormal romance novels to know Wonshik had been feeding off him. From his bedside drawer, he pulls out a pocket Bible that someone handed him on the subway. Wonshik looks at it and scoffs.

"Taekwoon, you're better than this," he replies, tongue pressed to the side of his cheek chidingly.

"Am I? I'm not so sure. I just kissed the truest, most prevalent symbol of evil in, like, every culture! Maybe I'm  _ not _ better than this," Taekwoon says, shaking the pocket bible around in front of his body like a miniscule leather-bound shield.

"I gave you  _ three strikes _ \--" Taekwoon’s ceiling opens up in a bright beaming light. 

"Oh, thank  _ fuck _ ,” Taekwoon wails, waggling his arms at the ceiling.

Jaehwan appears on top of Taekwoon's bed in his pristine white suit, his head centimeters from the ceiling, staring down at Wonshik with a bitter scowl. He stands for a moment, unblinking, and his expression soon morphs into a look of utter and complete despair.

"What did you do, Wonshik," he cries, leaping down in that graceful noiseless way he does to take Wonshik's face in his hands before shrieking and stepping away. He looks down, and his palms are red and blistered. "Oh this is bad, this is so bad."

"You can fix it, right?" Taekwoon begs, now clutching a pillow to his chest protectively, having given up on the pocket bible.

"Uh," Jaehwan replies, showing Taekwoon his smoldering hands. "What am I supposed to do with him? Kill him? He's already dead."

"Just pull his soul back outta there. Send him back to the void, I dunno!" Taekwoon crows, and then there's an insistent set of knocks pounding on his front door. "Shit. That was fast?"

"Taekwoon! Jung Taekwoon!" Hongbin shrieks.

"You call us at ass-o'clock in the morning, and then you don't answer your phone when we call back!" Sanghyuk calls, and now Taekwoon is positive they'd been fucking and not answering his phone calls.

"I'm just here because they dragged me here, and I'm sure everything is fine, right?" Chansik adds, and now Taekwoon has never been more certain that while he'd been discovering his lover had shifted into a demon in the night (after they'd finally had sex, mind you) his friends were having a restful, loving menage a trois.

Taekwoon backs out of the room and rushes to the door, whipping it open and letting Hongbin and Sanghyuk fall through the doorway comically and wrap him up tightly.

"Taek, what in the hell happened?" Hongbin coos, reaching up to pet Taekwoon's pathetic tear tracks from his cheeks.

"It's the ghost, right?" Sanghyuk says, and there's panic in his voice that Taekwoon can taste in the air.

From the room, Taekwoon hears a triumphant cry and Wonshik is leaning against the doorway now, arms crossed over his chest as he looks at Sanghyuk.

"There he is," Wonshik says, tipping his head against the doorframe, and Taekwoon hates how his heart aches at how handsome he looks. "Hyukkie, our baby of the group."

"How does he..." Chansik is saying, glancing first at Hongbin and then over at Wonshik. He seems to finally notice the gaping unhealed wounds in Wonshik's torso, and shrieks and he doubles over, threatening to retch on Taekwoon's floor.

"Not my hardwoods, please," Taekwoon hisses, before returning his concentration to the matter at hand. The matter being why his ghost-turned-demon lover is pleased to see his friend who he should not normally care about.

Sanghyuk stumbles behind Hongbin and Taekwoon in his loose gray hoodie and black sweatpants, shaggy hair a mess over his eyebrows, looking every bit the child that Taekwoon still sees him as. He fists his hands in Hongbin's coat.

"Don't listen to him," Sanghyuk pleads, voice quieter than Taekwoon has ever heard it, and very, truly afraid.

"Taekwoon, you know, I thought there had to be more of a reason why I felt a connection to you. It isn't just this apartment. It isn't just that I find you beautiful and kind and wanted you to see me so badly. It isn’t that I just wanted to see you stripped bare and riding my cock--"

Hongbin slides an accusatory glare in Taekwoon's direction. Taekwoon ignores it, a deep fire churning in his gut.

"It's Hyukkie," Wonshik says, stepping out from the doorway.

Sanghyuk tries to make himself smaller behind Taekwoon and Hongbin, bending down to hide as much of his giant lanky body as possible.

"Stop fucking around," Taekwoon says, trying to maintain control of the situation--this is  _ his _ home--shoving Wonshik back, but his body is suddenly solid and hard and immovable as a marble pillar buried deep in the earth. Wonshik simply presses forward and maneuvers Taekwoon and Hongbin out of the way. Sanghyuk backs up against the fridge, cowering.

"I know it wasn't entirely your fault, Hyukkie, but can you blame me for being a little...let's say...resentful?"

Sanghyuk drops to a squat and hides his face in his hands, and Taekwoon hears the quick hitched sobs behind his palms. "I couldn't. I couldn't, please. Fuck, Ravi, I didn't  _ know _ he was going to...I  _ tried,  _ I really... _ fuck _ , please."

Taekwoon steps forward again, between Wonshik and Sanghyuk, and Wonshik won't look at him. He's focused on Sanghyuk where he cowers against the refrigerator.

"Someone wanna tell me what the fuck is up?" it takes a second for Taekwoon to get his voice out, to yank the bravado up from his gall bladder or wherever it is that bravado is stored.

Wonshik tears his gaze away from Sanghyuk for a moment. "I realized why I couldn't move on," he says, lifting a hand to swirl his finger around in the air before pointing it at Sanghyuk. Sanghyuk doesn't look up, but an unearthly whine rips from his throat that sounds like  _ please _ .

"I found my killer."

Taekwoon looks down at Sanghyuk and then back up at Wonshik. He finds a laugh squeaking out of his windpipe like rubber on hot asphalt. " _ Sanghyuk? _ "

Wonshik nods. "The same."

Hongbin and Chansik have moved to kneel beside Sanghyuk with hands on either shoulder, both trying to comfort him. Taekwoon notes that Hongbin is hesitant in his touches, unsure, Wonshik’s words hitting him now.

"That's preposterous, Wonshik. Sanghyuk is a baby. Sanghyuk made me do a memorial photoshoot with my geriatric cat before I had to put her down."

Speaking of which, where the fuck did that ghost cat go?

Not now, Taekwoon. Not now.

"Han Sanghyuk, alias Hyuk,” Wonshik says, as if reciting from memory--memories he, until last night, did not have, “(not very clever, by the way, kid--very easily discoverable), is the lowest lackey of Bobby, aka Kim Jiwon, one of the largest suppliers of medical contraband in the area, Taekwoon. The kid came to my apartment to find out where I was hiding something of Jiwon's. I had been holding it for him before I realized what he was planning to do with it, and so Jiwon sent his little hellhound Hyuk here to get it, but Hyuk was too chicken to do it, so Jiwon showed up, and then boom I was stabbed a billion times." Wonshik is rambling now, and there’s an edge to his voice that cuts the air. 

"Okay, but...wait, slow down."

Sanghyuk's breathing is shallow; he's clearly hyperventilating, and Taekwoon knows in his gut that Wonshik isn't lying. What would be the point?

"Okay, you found your killer, so move on then," Taekwoon says, though if he admit it, he’s prying the words from his soft palate like prying a barnacle from the hull of a ship. The idea of Wonshik really moving on makes Taekwoon's eyes burn.

"I thought finding him would be enough," Wonshik answers, "but it looks like it isn't."

"Wonshik--"

A few things happen at once. 

Hongbin and Chansik rise up to surround Sanghyuk, but there’s a moment of hesitation again where Hongbin looks at Sanghyuk’s shuddering hands and bitten lips, and Wonshik takes advantage. He grabs Hongbin by the hair and knocks his and Chansik's heads together at the temples so hard that they collapse to the ground in a heap, immobile. 

Sanghyuk screams, bending to reach for them, and Wonshik grabs him by the collar, holding him up against the fridge, eyes glowing that hollow gold-lit red again. Sanghyuk’s features are twisted up and ruddy with tears, his chin physically quivering. 

"Clearly the universe needs balance," Wonshik says, fingers wrapping around Sanghyuk's throat and pressing.

Jaehwan reappears in the room, looking solemn and lost, still staring down at his palms, his hands shaking.

"Where the fuck were you? Stop him! What are you doing? Aren't angels supposed to stop demons? What are you even here for if you can't fix this?" 

Taekwoon is crying and trying to push the literal boulder that is Wonshik’s body, or even just distract him for a moment. Luckily (or unluckily) it seems Wonshik is trying to savor this moment, this moment of revenge that his corrupted soul has convinced himself it needs. Taekwoon can see the glow from Sanghyuk's throat going into Wonshik's hands, like he's not really choking him so much as holding him incapacitated while he steals his life.

"I can't stop someone from dying," Jaehwan answers. "I can only lead them on afterwards."

"He isn't  _ supposed to die _ ," Taekwoon screams, standing there uselessly and watching his fucking ghost lover stealing the life from his best friend. "Wonshik, please! If you kill him, how can I--"

The glow in Wonshik's eyes flickers for a moment, and Taekwoon knows he’s listening. 

"Please don't kill my friend," Taekwoon whines, knowing this is the most selfish, most childish reason to convince Wonshik not to literally take a human life. "If you kill him, I'll never recover, I'll never forget this, I'll never move on, and I promise you, I will never fucking love you."

Wonshik’s glow flickers again, and Taekwoon can see his fingers flexing against Sanghyuk’s throat, loosening.

“I would sacrifice a lot of things to be with you, Wonshik. Clearly. I’m a human who fucked a ghost. I would face the scorn of the nation, a tabloid failure the likes this world has probably never seen, if anyone found out about us. And you know that, don’t you? There can’t  _ be _ an us. We can’t be in love. Because you aren’t alive. I cannot love you. And I especially cannot love you if you do this. This is just proof of all that. Proof you aren’t human, that there is nothing left of you worth loving.”

Wonshik tears his hands from Sanghyuk's throat as his body pulses with weak, dim light. "You already do, I know you do, I know you gave yourself to me. And I am human. I’m alive." He wheels around, expression tight, frightened, as if Taekwoon has threatened something much worse than refusing to love him.

Taekwoon feels his heart climbing into his throat, into his mouth, beating weakly against his tongue. He wants to throw it up onto the floor at Wonshik's feet so he can see how weakly it beats. How it gurgles with resentment for promising itself to someone who has none to trade in return.

"I didn't give you anything," Taekwoon says, and Wonshik allows Sanghyuk's body drop limply to the floor. He turns his gaze fully to Taekwoon and steps into his space, face a twisted grimace.

"Taekwoon, please, I'm doing this for us, so we don't have to be like Jaehwan, like Jaehwan and his impossible tragic useless love story. We’ll be together."

"And what? You found your killer, you kill him in return, you move on. And then? I’m not going anywhere Wonshik. And you’ll be gone. I might forget about you. We don’t even know.”

Wonshik looks almost guilty for a second, and it feels like he’s still really Taekwoon’s Wonshik and not some weird amalgamation of him that got mixed up in the muddy tides of hell. “You could…”

Taekwoon slaps him, his palm stinging harshly as it drops back to his side. 

“The Wonshik that loves me wouldn’t ask me to die.”

Wonshik’s eyes return to simmering red, and it looks like he’s fighting the urge to return the hit. “I could wait.”

Taekwoon feels sick, feels a sick kind of hope at that. 

“You tried to kill my friend, Wonshik,” Taekwoon says, feeling the words bending his spine, twisting up his insides. 

“To be fair, he literally killed me,” Wonshik returns, a bitter bite in his tone. 

Sanghyuk is scrunched up in a ball against his refrigerator. “I’ll turn myself in, Taek. I’ll do it. It’s my fault. I held the knife. And he’s gonna come back for it--Bobby--he’s gonna come here to find it because his prints are on it too, and oh, they’ll never forgive me, Taek, I really ruined everything.”

Taekwoon is torn between wanting to pull Sanghyuk close and shield him from this, from a horror of his own creation, and wanting to allow Wonshik his revenge. There’s something tugging at his ribs from both sides. The love he feels for his best friend and the love he feels for the only creature he’s harbored real romantic affection for in years. Maybe ever. 

Sanghyuk’s whole body is quaking, and Taekwoon has never seen fear this real before, this potent. It’s wafting from Sanghyuk’s body and hanging darkly in the air like carbon monoxide, like poison, and Taekwoon wants to make it all go away; he does, he really does.

But there is that hurt, that surging, burning hurt in Wonshik’s eyes. Wonshik  _ died _ . His life was taken from him, and Sanghyuk can feel his fear because he is alive. Wonshik doesn’t have that luxury. 

Taekwoon swallows down his indecision and grabs Wonshik by the hips to pull their bodies flush.

Wonshik startles, his eyes still that haunted amber color, but he tears his gaze away from Sanghyuk, where it’s been lingering since he released his throat. 

“We’re gonna send you back,” Taekwoon says, and Sanghyuk releases a primally terrified wail. 

“Really? You’ll let me?” Wonshik replies, breathless, and Taekwoon takes him by the jaw, forcing Wonshik to keep his eyes on Taekwoon’s instead of shifting back to Sanghyuk. 

“Where’s the knife that killed you?” 

Wonshik lifts a finger towards the fridge. 

“Can you move it?”

Wonshik nods. He easily maneuvers the massive stainless steel appliance out of its nook beside the stove, and Taekwoon sees the glint of metal under the overhead lights. And a poorly repatched bit of drywall. 

“You hid drugs in my wall?”

“To be fair, it was my wall first,” Wonshik says, stepping closer and hovering his hand in the air above the knife. “He took these prescription pain meds from free clinics, Taek. He’s soulless. I was fine peddling weed to a bunch of dumb college kids, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t know where these drugs came from and go through with it.”

“I can’t believe you literally died because you hid drugs in my wall.”

“Again, I had no idea who you were or that you would live here,” Wonshik replies, bending to reach for the knife. 

Sanghyuk has gotten onto his hands and knees and began crawling for the door. Taekwoon catches his eye, mouths the words  _ don’t move _ . 

Sanghyuk whimpers. 

Taekwoon mouths again  _ I’ve got a fucking plan _ .

He does not, in fact, have a plan. But he does know he needs to distract Wonshik until it comes to him. And Wonshik is distracted by Sanghyuk’s presence enough for it to count. 

Sanghyuk:  _ what? _

Taekwoon:  _ a. Fucking. Plan _ .

Jaehwan is gone again, Taekwoon realizes. The useless holy douche. What good is the godly ability to transport souls without the ability to save them? 

Wonshik yelps, and Taekwoon wheels around to see him clutching at his wrist, his hand smoking and blistered like Jaehwan’s had been when he touched Wonshik’s bare skin. 

“What is it?”

Wonshik kicks at the knife, and it skitters along the floor until it reaches Taekwoon’s socked foot. “I can’t touch it.”

“You want me to do it?”

“I’ll hold your hand.”

Sanghyuk looks up at Taekwoon, lost and covered in snot and Taekwoon bends to take the hilt of the knife in his hand. 

“I can’t believe you were killed with a Shun Classic santoku knife,” Taekwoon gasps, “I’ve wanted one of these for years, holy shit, you could cut through a  _ brick  _ with these things.”

_ “Taekwoon.” _

“Sorry, you’re right.”

“Huh? I didn’t say anything,” Wonshik replies, and Taekwoon realizes the voice had been in his head.

Oh great. Hearing voices. Lovely. Is it because of the panic? Taekwoon has read that could happen.

_ “Taekwoon, it’s Jaehwan,” _ the voice says again, and Taekwoon feels like he should sigh in relief, but he doesn’t want to draw attention to the fact that he’s hearing angelic voices.  _ “I think I know what to do.” _

Taekwoon senses Wonshik coming up behind him, planting a kiss on his bare shoulder, and Taekwoon’s heart won’t stop racing. His skin burns where Wonshik’s lips touched him.

_ Please don’t tell me that true love kills the demon spirit or something because I don’t have time for fairy tales right now, Jaehwan _ .

_ “No, ew, don’t be stupid. Demons couldn’t give a single fuck about love.” _

_ Then why is Wonshik so clingy as a demon. He still has memories of us. Of when he was alive, too.  _

_ “Demons need blood. Or energy. If there is a part of Wonshik’s soul uncorrupted, that’s the part that gives a damn about you, Taekwoon, but the demon in there would sooner suck the life out of you through your nostrils than buy you a Valentine’s gift.” _

_ Delightful _ .

_ “I’m gonna tell you what to do, but you have to do everything in sequence, okay? And don’t question it.” _

Taekwoon nods, feeling Wonshik’s hand wrapping around his own on the hilt of the blade, practically quivering with anticipation. 

“I can’t believe you’re going to do this for me,” Wonshik breathes, and Taekwoon’s heart gives a pathetic thump.

_ “Get Sanghyuk cornered _ .”

“Clearly this...cretin--” Sanghyuk flinches as he makes to stand and rush for the door, and Taekwoon quickly catches him (Sanghyuk having run crookedly, unsteadily as a newly birthed foal), presses him up against it. “Has a lesson to learn?”

_ “Your acting is abysmal.” _

_ Shut up.  _

Wonshik tightens his grip over Taekwoon’s on the blade, thrilled by the prospect of fulfilling this quest for vengeful blood.

_ “Now this next part is gonna sound kind of unpleasant,”  _ Jaehwan says, voice hesitant in Taekwoon’s skull. 

_ Things are already unpleasant, so just get on with it _ .

Wonshik lifts Taekwoon’s hand and brings the blade of the knife up to Sanghyuk’s throat. Sanghyuk is trembling, endless streaks of tears coating his face, snot running over his lips and down his chin. Taekwoon doesn’t think he’ll ever unsee this. His lips are moving, forming words Taekwoon can’t really read. Maybe they’re prayers. Taekwoon feels sick.

_ “You have to bloat Wonshik with blood energy until he has enough to make his heart start beating again. That’s what this is all about. Wonshik believes he can be human again, alive again by taking this energy.” _

_ He wasn’t planning on moving on at all, was he? _

_ “That’s not really Wonshik in there, Taekwoon. He might have convinced you otherwise, but it’s a front. Evil latches onto desperation. It made Wonshik believe he could be with you if he allowed it inside him. But that isn’t him.” _

_ What do I do then? _

_ “You’ve got two choices.” _

_ I hate choices. _

_ “Let him kill Sanghyuk and feed and then kill him in turn. That’s your first choice.” _

_ Not liking the sound of this. _

_ “Or let him feed from you and find a way to kill him while he’s draining you. Demons can feed more quickly if there is blood involved. If the human is suffering. When any natural protective shields are down.” _

_ You’re right. Those both do sound unpleasant _ .

Taekwoon can feel Wonshik’s anticipatory grip on his wrist, wanting Taekwoon to move the knife through Sanghyuk’s throat. Taekwoon realizes Wonshik isn’t able to do it himself. 

_ I know he murdered my sort of already ex-lover, but I can’t kill my friend _ .

_ “Then maybe I’ll see you on the other side, Taekwoon.” _

Taekwoon’s eyes sting, his throat stings, his skin stings. Everything stings. 

He lifts his hand, and Wonshik gasps in surprised pleasure, burning against Taekwoon’s back, before Taekwoon turns the knife around in his fist and jabs himself in the gut. 

Pain blooms wide and rapid. 

Sanghyuk’s eyes, bloodshot and miserable, widen impossibly, and his hands come up as if to reach for Taekwoon, but Taekwoon shoves him away. 

“Get out,” he hisses. “Get them out too.”

Taekwoon stumbles back into the circle of Wonshik’s arms.

Wonshik’s beaming gaze flickers once, twice, three times, and there’s a moment where he looks terrified, as if the Wonshik that watered his plants while he was out were still inside him, but then that moment passes.

And Wonshik glows red, reaches for Taekwoon, and feeds. 

Taekwoon goes limp, knees buckling beneath him, and Wonshik drops with him to the floor. Taekwoon’s head is pillowed on Wonshik’s firm thigh, and he lets his eyelids flutter closed as the pain trickles like sand in his veins into numbness.

My hardwoods, Taekwoon thinks, as his stomach pools with blood that drips over his sides and between the cracks in the wood. Wonshik has his hands pressed over Taekwoon’s wound, and Taekwoon can almost pretend he’s trying to save him, trying to keep the hurt inside somehow, though he can feel the tugging, that insistent pull of energy being ripped from his body.

The halo of red light around Wonshik’s body glows brighter, and Taekwoon can barely see through the haze of it all, though that might have something to do with bleeding out in his kitchen. He really liked this kitchen, too, despite the fact that his sort of ex-lover died here, and now he is going to die here too.

And even now, Taekwoon looks at Wonshik and knows he would do it again. Not just to save Sanghyuk. But to save the ghost boy who unloaded his dishwasher when Taekwoon was too lazy. To save the ghost boy who trapped a roach under a paper cup and threw it from the window when Taekwoon was too scared. To save the ghost boy who hovered over Taekwoon’s bed and pretended they could be spooning when it was physiologically and cosmically impossible. Just to make Taekwoon feel safe. Taekwoon would do it all again to save that boy. 

_ Is this the moment they talk about when they talk about dying? _

_ “I don’t know. Which moment?” _

_ The one where I think about all the things I’ve done or could have done _ .

_ “I’m not sure. What are you thinking about?” _

_ One time I told my nephew I’d teach him how to make grilled cheese, but I never did _ .

_ “I don’t know what that is. Is it a human food?” _

_ I also once got drunk and told Hongbin I loved him, but I don’t think I did. I think I was just upset that he didn’t love me. _

_ “Taekwoon, don’t forget you still have something left to do.” _

_ I know. Gimme a minute.  _

_ “Taekwoon.” _

_ Okay, okay. God. Why are you rushing my pre-death monologue? _

_ “Sanghyuk has already called an ambulance, Taekwoon. No one says you have to die.” _

Wonshik lifts his blood-soaked hands to touch Taekwoon’s face, and then their lips are touching. This must be the last kiss. The last pull of energy. Taekwoon can feel those last vestiges of warmth leaving his core. Like Wonshik is licking the bowl. Like he’s scraping it clean with his teeth and tongue.

Taekwoon misses his tongue. 

_ My sort of ex lover is cradling my half-dead body and kissing me to death, isn’t that romantic? _

_ “The knife, Taekwoon _ . _ ” _

Taekwoon puts any strength he has left into the fist wrapped around the hilt of the blade that had sliced into his own stomach. Is it odd that Taekwoon finds it oddly romantic that the same blade that might have killed him is the blade that killed his sort of ex-lover?

_ “Yes, that’s very odd. Now hurry _ .  _ Is his heart beating? _ ”

Taekwoon lifts his empty hand and presses it to Wonshik’s chest. It burns hot against his skin, but he doesn’t pull away.

Wonshik looks down at Taekwoon’s hand and stops feeding. 

Taekwoon feels empty and numb while simultaneously in pain literally everywhere, but there is a faint beat below his palm. 

“Thanks for watering my plants. And for emptying the coffee grounds. And for turning over my cassette to side B in my murder mysteries while I sleep because I’m a grandpa. And for…” his lips are numb now, and he can’t do it anymore. 

_ “Taekwoon, you have to do it now. Taekwoon. Do it.” _

Taekwoon’s vision is blurry, but he can see Wonshik looking down at him now. A blurry outline of him, but it is him nonetheless. 

In the distance, he thinks he hears sirens. They’re really ruining his pre-death moment tragic aesthetic. 

Wonshik touches a hand to Taekwoon’s chest, mirroring his pose, and then there’s a choked, “Oh God. Taekwoon, oh God” in that sweet rumbling bass of a voice that once read  _ Hunting and Fishing  _ magazine to him until he fell asleep to the dreadfully boring description of different crossbows. Taekwoon had just wanted to know if Wonshik could read anything and make it sound sensual and calming.  

And then Taekwoon plunges the knife into Wonshik’s chest. 

A few things happen at once.

Wonshik’s body catches fire. It starts as a little flame around the blade, dancing against the steel in a little wreath of blinding light, but then it burns up impossibly fast. It consumes him. There’s no heat, even with Taekwoon’s hand still gripping the hilt of the knife. 

Wonshik doesn’t turn to ash. There’s nothing left on Taekwoon’s floor. No blood. No bones. No sign Wonshik had ever been there. He’s just gone. 

Taekwoon’s front door bursts open, and there are loud, barking voices around him. 

Taekwoon finally drops the knife to the floor and looks up at his ceiling, thinking of the time he swiped his fingers through Wonshik’s ghostly mist to see if it would tickle. 

  
  


Things go dark. 

He hears a vaguely familiar voice in his head saying,  _ “You did well. You did very well, Taekwoon _ .”

And a second voice. One that Taekwoon can’t put a name to, but he knows it’s someone important. He just says,  _ “Thank you”  _ and  _ “I’m sorry”  _ and Taekwoon could be wrong, but he thinks he hears  _ “I’m glad it was you, I guess. I’m glad it was you who killed me again.” _

Taekwoon finds that funny. He doesn’t know why. And he doesn’t know why he responds with:

_ If I remember you when I’m up there, I’ll find you again.  _

_ “It’s going to be a while,”  _ the voice says.  _ “But I’ve got time _ . _ ” _

_ How much time? _

_ “I’ve got as much time as there is.” _

 

Taekwoon wakes up to the sound of unsynchronized beeps. 

There’s a hand clutched around one of his own, and his eyelids find their way open again but it’s so hard, as if he’s had to relearn the motion completely. 

“Shit, oh shit, he’s awake, he’s  _ awake _ \--”

Taekwoon’s vision refocuses. The person holding his hand has deep bruises under his eyes and a thick white bandage wrapped around his skull, his neck in a padded brace. But he still looks inhumanly perfect. Inhumanly handsome. 

Hongbin. 

Taekwoon manages to put a little pressure in as he squeezes Hongbin’s hand. 

Hongbin chokes on a sob and bends over Taekwoon’s face to brush his bangs from his face and kiss his forehead. “Fucking hell, Jung Taekwoon. Fucking hell. I was so scared. I couldn’t lose...I couldn’t do it without you. Fuck. Fuck! Why didn’t you tell us you had a demon?”

Taekwoon blinks slowly, tips his head to the side. “A what?”

Hongbin lets out a shaky breath, drops back into his chair at Taekwoon’s bedside. “You don’t remember.”

Taekwoon remembers the color red. He remembers someone watered his plants. Someone changed the coffee filter. Someone kissed him like he were made of precious stones. 

He shakes his head. 

Hongbin sighs and pats the top of Taekwoon’s hand. “That’s probably for the best.”

Chansik is standing by the window, looking just as minorly banged up as Hongbin. He doesn’t say anything, just leans against the windowsill and stares down at his slippers. 

There’s a name heavy on Taekwoon’s tongue, and it sloughs out into the open air when he parts his lips. “Sanghyuk.”

Hongbin’s lips quiver, his eyes brimming with tears, and he looks up at the ceiling, blinking rapidly. “He, ah, he’s gonna be gone for a while, Taek.”

It comes back in bits. 

The knife. The patch of drywall. Bobby. Hyuk. 

There’s another name Taekwoon is forgetting, but he knows where Sanghyuk is.

“He turned himself in.”

Hongbin nods, and Taekwoon hears the sound of the door sliding closed as Chansik quickly strides out.

Hongbin’s hand shakes, and Taekwoon holds it tighter. “They’re going to give him a reduced sentence for turning in Jiwon and everyone he can remember that worked with him.”

Taekwoon nods. 

“I know he really fucked up, Taek, I know he broke the one major law of the universe, did the one truly evil thing they tell you not to do, but I love him,” Hongbin croaks, bent over the bed and pressing his face into the sheet draped over Taekwoon’s legs. 

“Nobody’s perfect,” Taekwoon says.

Hongbin snorts. “This is a little bit beyond that cliche, Taek.”

“You love him. That’s it. That’s all there is.”

“Taek.”

“He’s alive, and he’s okay. It’s going to be okay. So you should hold onto him. He’s going to need you. You and Chansik.”

Hongbin lifts his face, eyes red and bleary, and he smiles. “Almost dying has made you quite wise, Jung.”

“I have a feeling I’m just jealous.”

“I thought you were over me.”

“Don’t be so cocky, Stringbean. I mean someone else. It feels like there’s something hooked under my ribs. Like a fishing hook.”

“I think that might be because you stabbed yourself.”

Taekwoon touches his hand to his stomach, feels the bandages held over his thick stitches, then slides his palm up to his ribcage. “Here. It feels like there’s something here. And I’ve got one side of the fishing line, and there’s someone very, very far away who’s got the other side.”

“That’s very romantic. Was this a dream you had during surgery? You lost a good amount of blood, and the doctors said you were nearly comatose by the time they loaded you in the ambulance.”

“There  _ was _ someone,” Taekwoon asserts. “And he promised I’d see him again.”

Hongbin gives Taekwoon a weary, unsure smile. “Do you want me to call the nurse? Are you in pain?”

Taekwoon shrugs a little. “I feel okay.” The motion of the shrug tugs at his stitches, and he grimaces.

Hongbin rises up from the chair. “I’ll get the nurse.”

“Wait. Bean?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you ever water my plants?”

“What?”

“Nothing. I mean. You never watered my plants?”

“No, Taek. I don’t break into your apartment to water your plants. I’m getting the nurse.”

The door slides open. It slides shut.

Taekwoon looks over at the window. It must be nearly night, but there’s a bright light shimmering to his left. 

There’s a man perched on the windowsill, looking at Taekwoon’s collection of apologetic bouquets.  _ Sorry you nearly died, IT guy.  _

Taekwoon feels like he should be alarmed, but the man’s presence is oddly comforting. 

“He asked me to come and check on you. Since he can’t anymore.”

“He?”

The man runs his hands over his crisp white suit, brushing off pollen from the flowers. It doesn’t stain. “He also asked me to erase your memory of the whole demon thing. But I may have taken too much.”

Taekwoon just blinks in reply. 

“Right. Anyhow, I’ll go tell him you’re fine. I mean, obviously, he knows. Since you aren’t up there.”

“Up?”

“Yepp, definitely took too much,” the man says, sighing and rubbing at his forehead. “I’m going to give you two choices, Jung Taekwoon.” He holds up two fingers, wiggles them around in the air. “You ready?”

Taekwoon nods, somehow trusting.

“One: I restore your memories of everything. But I have to also tell you your death date, and you have to promise me you will wait until that day. As a precaution, you know, in case you try to speed things up to get there faster. I won’t have that on me. You have to stick to the date I tell you, got it?”

Taekwoon has no idea what these words mean, but he knows the implication behind them.

“Two: I leave you like this.”

There’s an aching hollowness ringing in his chest, and Taekwoon wants to fill it. 

He touches his fingers to his ribs, searching for the metal end of the fishhook. 

Looks up into the blinding, familiar light of the angel on his windowsill. 

“Tell me.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	9. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: thanks for coming along on this wild ghostfucker ride with me!! this fic started out kind of as a little pet project, but then I fell in love with it. I hope you come away from this fic feeling only good things!! come yell at me on twitter if you want @likesatellitez, and you'll see me again soon!!

Taekwoon isn't scared when it happens. He's known it was coming for years now. If anything, it was like he was always waiting. Always aware of how much time he had left. 

Everything goes white and misty, or maybe that is just his body dissolving up into celestial goo.

And then there's a man there in all that nothing, and he's tan and bright and beautiful, and he says, "Taekwoon, you can take a body now, if you want."

And Taekwoon realizes he is just a little floating cloud of bits of himself. So thin and wispy he’d slide right through a butterfly net. "How?"

"Just become whatever version of yourself you want," the man says, and his voice is high and sweet and familiar.

Taekwoon doesn’t know which form his body takes, but it feels right and solid and true. 

“I’m...meeting someone, right?” he asks, and the man nods, holding out his hand. 

“You don’t remember me, do you?” 

Taekwoon looks again and sees that the man’s face is tan and soft in the cheeks and he speaks out of dark red lips, and Taekwoon thinks he does know him after all. 

“Hakyeon?” 

Hakyeon nods, and Taekwoon grabs him by the hand tightly. “I heard you died. I remember seeing it in the papers. God, you were so young.” 

Hakyeon smiles, and his body is so bright and lovely that Taekwoon thinks maybe he shouldn’t look at it directly. 

“You had a good life, right?” Hakyeon asks him.

Taekwoon nods. Though the details of his life are already disintegrating into a thin fog in his mind, he thinks he must’ve had a good life. He doesn’t feel bitter to be no longer alive.

“Is Jaehwan coming?”

Hakyeon pouts, crosses his arms over his bare chest. “You remember him so easily but not me?”

“He kind of made a rather large impression on me when he told me the exact moment I was going to die,” Taekwoon replies. 

“I suppose that’s fair,” Hakyeon says, waving a hand in the air dismissively. “Still disheartening. After all those times I did your makeup for you before parties.”

“Parties, from what I can vaguely recall, that I ditched very soon after arriving,” Taekwoon says. 

Hakyeon gives a soft giggle and nods. “You were always far too pretty for someone so thoroughly stuck in the mud.”

Taekwoon scoffs. “I wasn’t stuck in the mud. I was just reluctant to fill my body up with cheap liquor and grind on dumb jocks.”

Hakyeon coughs into his palm as he chokes out, “Muuuuud.”

Taekwoon is about to leap at him when Jaehwan appears between them, glowing even more brightly than Hakyeon in his stupid crisp white suit. 

“I see you’ve been reacquainted with the love of my life,” Jaehwan says, gesturing to Hakyeon.

“ _ And _ the fire of his loins,” Hakyeon adds. 

“Gross,” Taekwoon snorts. “Can we go now?”

“Eager,” Jaehwan teases, poking Taekwoon in the cheek. “He’s waited so many years already. He’ll be fine if you’re a little late.”

“What if I don’t recognize him?” Taekwoon whines, rubbing at his eyes blearily. 

“Then love is dead,” Jaehwan replies. “And you will have personally slaughtered it. With your own two hands.”

Taekwoon whines louder, more gutturally. 

Hakyeon punches Jaehwan in the back, between his shoulder blades. “Don’t be a dick. Taekwoon, honey, you’ll be fine. Even if you don’t recognize him at first, you will. And he’ll know you.”

Taekwoon knows his heart doesn’t beat anymore, but he swears he feels the ghost sensation of it ticking in his chest. Rapid. Rapid beating against his ribs. 

“Okay, let’s go,” Taekwoon begs, eyes shut tight as he wills himself to calm down. 

Jaehwan takes Taekwoon’s hand. Hakyeon touches Taekwoon’s cheek and presses a kiss to his forehead. 

“I’m glad I got to see you,” Hakyeon says, and there’s a smile in his voice, the same smile that had teased Taekwoon for crying when Hakyeon touched the eyeliner pencil to his waterline. “Say hello to Wonshik for me.”

“Wonshik,” Taekwoon repeats, tasting the name on his tongue, as Jaehwan leads him into the light.

 

Wonshik has waited longer than anyone should have to wait. 

He’s glad that Taekwoon got to live the life he was meant to live before finding him. He is. He’s glad that Jaehwan told him about how Taekwoon quit IT to open an animal shelter. How Taekwoon rescued kittens from drain pipes and rabbits from Easter displays in jewelry stores. He’s also grateful Jaehwan conveniently left out any and all information of Taekwoon’s romantic or sexual explorations post-Wonshik on earth. That’s fine. 

Because Taekwoon is coming for him. 

Finally, finally. Finally.

(Finally).

There’s a burst of light outside Wonshik’s place of residence. He wouldn’t call it a home. There’s no property in Beyond. It is what you will it to be.

Wonshik willed it into something resembling a home. Jaehwan thought it was stupid. Who needs a home in the Beyond. You could be or do or see or exist as anything. 

But Wonshik just wants to be Wonshik. The one that didn’t get to live.

That didn’t get a home. 

That didn’t get Taekwoon. 

Wonshik rushes to his doorway, the doorway to Everything Beyond, where the light flashed. 

Jaehwan is standing there in the bright gleaming light of Everything Beyond, with Taekwoon, eyes shut, hand clamped to Jaehwan’s at his side. 

“Taekwoon,” Wonshik breathes, and Taekwoon’s eyelids flutter open. 

And it’s him. Just the same as he was the day Wonshik first saw him. Taekwoon could have become anyone, anything, anything at all, but he was Wonshik’s Taekwoon just like Wonshik was Taekwoon’s Wonshik. 

Taekwoon steps into Wonshik’s space, and Jaehwan gives him a brief smirk before poofing away. 

“Um,” Taekwoon says, that sweet beautiful soft angelic voice that could turn coal to diamonds. 

“Hi,” Wonshik says in reply, feeling just as unsteady, just as unsure as he always was around Taekwoon, and it’s like the two of them are in their twenties again, lost in the knowledge that they felt something for one another but not knowing what to do with it. Not knowing they could do anything with it. Not knowing if it was possible or right or okay. 

“I’m dead now,” Taekwoon says, and Wonshik laughs. 

“Do you need a moment?” 

Taekwoon shakes his head, steps closer, touches his hands to the collar of Wonshik’s plaid shirt. 

Wonshik doesn’t have to wear anything. But he changes his clothes everyday because it makes him feel alive. Like he’s living, at least. 

Taekwoon seems to realize he’s naked. He’s willed himself into a form but not into a form with clothes. Clothes aren’t a first priority when you’re celestial goo in need of a shape. 

“I feel a bit underdressed,” Taekwoon admits, staring down at his own nudity. 

“I don’t mind,” Wonshik replies.

There’s a pause, where Wonshik is unsure if he said the wrong thing. He and Taekwoon--they were a thing but that was so long ago and maybe this is too quick for him, too sudden--

Taekwoon snorts on a loud, obnoxious laugh, and Wonshik’s heart eases. 

“I bet you don’t. I remember your voyeuristic tendencies, Kim Wonshik,” Taekwoon chides, tugging at Wonshik’s shirt collar and fiddling with the buttons. “I recall a certain penchant for watching me...diddling my...whatsits.”

Wonshik looks down at Taekwoon’s hands, watches him fumbling with the little metal buttons, and laughs again. 

“I could just will the whole thing away, if you want,” Wonshik says.

“I’m still getting used to being dead, please allow me the normalcy of stripping you,” Taekwoon hisses, yanking at the flannel until it comes free from Wonshik’s shoulders, slips down his arms onto the floor. 

“Forgive me. I forgot how delicate your countenance is,” Wonshik replies, keeping his hands at his sides as Taekwoon runs his fingers over Wonshik’s chest and ribs and stomach. “The same man who couldn’t have the television volume on an odd number.”

“You feel so real again,” Taekwoon observes, pressing in on Wonshik’s belly and watching it dip under his fingers. “And you can’t blame me for the television thing. That’s a perfectly reasonable superstition.”

“I am real,” Wonshik says, shivering at the touch. It’s been so long. 

Fuck, so fucking long. 

“I heard that you rescued animals, you little softie,” Wonshik says, needing to make small talk as Taekwoon just runs his hands all over Wonshik’s torso and down to the V of his hips. 

“Let’s not talk about my life. This is my Death Time,” Taekwoon explains, “and everything from before is just Before. This is After. And I’m here.”

“Sure,” Wonshik says, glad that Taekwoon isn’t eager to talk about the rest of his life Post-Wonshik on earth. He’s fine with that. Though he wonders if there will be someone else coming to the Beyond, seeking Taekwoon later. A wife. A husband. A child. 

He shakes away that thought. 

And grabs Taekwoon by the face, thumbs at his jawline, and pulls him in. His lips are still so soft, so pouty and pink and lovely. 

“You waited a long time to do that, didn’t you?” Taekwoon gasps into the space between their lips, clutching onto Wonshik’s shoulders. 

“I’ve got you swooning already, Jung Taekwoon, and we’ve only just gotten reacquainted,” Wonshik says, pressing his lips to Taekwoon’s cheeks, his nose, his forehead, his chin, his lips, his lips, his lips, his lips--

Taekwoon shoves at Wonshik’s shoulders, laughing and wiping at his lips with the back of his hand. “You’re dumb. And gross. Can I sit for a second?”

Wonshik gestures to his bed. He doesn’t need it. They don’t need sleep. They don’t need anything. But, again, the normalcy. He’s been dead so long now, but he still craves that humanity. 

Taekwoon perches on the edge of the mattress, long pale legs stretched out in front of him on the floor. “Did you miss me?” he asks.

Wonshik drops down beside him, puts a tentative hand on Taekwoon’s knee. “That’s a stupid question.”

Taekwoon shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure how to do this. Are we together? Were we just on a break for the rest of my earth time? And now we just begin again?”

Wonshik shrugs. “Whatever you want. I’ve waited this long. I don’t mind making you fall for me again.”

“I don’t think you realize how much I fought that,” Taekwoon huffs, eyes on his feet. “You know how it feels to want to fuck a ghost?”

“I don’t,” Wonshik replies, laughing, “but I imagine you felt rather icky.”

“Icky is a kind word for it. Maybe the better word would be perverted? Sick? Demented?”

Wonshik runs a hand through Taekwoon’s hair, the long dark strands still so familiar between his fingers. “Well everything was fine. In the end.”

“Says the one who didn’t have to live with the knowledge that he fucked a ghost,” Taekwoon scoffs. 

“Sorry for giving you the best orgasm of your life, Taek,” Wonshik taunts, lifting his hands in surrender. “I’ll never do it again!”

Taekwoon grunts and climbs up onto the bed, shoving Wonshik back against the mattress. He brackets Wonshik’s waist with his thighs and bears down over him, glowering. 

“You’ll do quite the opposite, Kim Wonshik! You owe me a phenomenal orgasm at least once a day for the rest of forever, you hear? You know how many times I lay awake thinking about how good that felt and how I would have to wait  _ so fucking long _ to experience it again? It made it impossible for me to--”

“Don’t,” Wonshik cuts in, pushing away mental images of Taekwoon beneath other bodies. “I don’t want to know about...others.”

Taekwoon nods, leaning down to press their lips together again.

And then it’s just wordless for a while.

Just breath and hands and gentle motion. Their bodies meeting again after so long, this time with the knowledge that they have all the time there is of time to be this way, if they want.

And maybe Taekwoon won’t want it. After some time passes. Wonshik doesn’t know. Couldn’t know. But Taekwoon is here now.

(Finally).

And his skin is smooth and freckled just where he remembers and gives under his hands in the places he remembers, and he gasps so sweetly into Wonshik’s mouth when he touches him just right where he remembers. 

“I can’t smell you,” Taekwoon observes, nose pressed to Wonshik’s sternum, hand wrapped around Wonshik’s cock, with Wonshik rutting up into that warm touch. “Is that weird? Should I be able to smell you?”

“Not really,” Wonshik gasps, gripping into Taekwoon’s hair, arching up off the mattress when Taekwoon guides Wonshik’s already hard, overheated skin into his mouth. “Souls don’t really have a scent.”

“I feel like I can taste you though,” Taekwoon garbles around Wonshik’s cock.

Wonshik wants to laugh. Feels like he’s laughed more in the last bit of time since Taekwoon arrived than he has in ages and ages. Taekwoon’s little lips are stretched around him, but he’s still trying to talk. Wonshik always thought Taekwoon was such a quiet person. Reserved. Aloof.

He was wrong.

Taekwoon talks  _ a lot _ . 

Taekwoon doesn’t shut up.

And Wonshik never stops loving the sound of his voice. 

“Yeah? That might be based on memory,” Wonshik says, panting out of habit and not out of need. 

“Why would anyone want to remember the taste of sperm?” Taekwoon ponders, licking kittenishly at Wonshik’s slit. 

“How about we stop that train of thought,” Wonshik says, tugging at Taekwoon’s hair, “and you just come sit on my lap.”

Taekwoon reluctantly pulls away from Wonshik’s cock and clambers over his lap. “Do I not need...I mean, I guess there’s no point, right? I can make my body ready whenever. And I can’t get any diseases.”

“Technically we could just keep fucking for all eternity without stopping,” Wonshik explains, somewhat smug about that realization, though it has nothing to do with his own prowess and more to do with being made of malleable celestial goo.

“That sounds nice,” Taekwoon replies, seating himself quickly over Wonshik’s cock, and the sudden tightness and heat enveloping him has him clawing at the sheets. “What if I want to stop sometimes and enjoy the weather?”

Wonshik lifts a hand from the sheets and gestures around them. “What weather?”

Taekwoon arches his back, fully sinks himself down on Wonshik’s cock, and suddenly there’s a swollen gray raincloud hovering over Wonshik on the bed. Rain cascades down hard onto Wonshik’s face, and he gags on it, spluttering.

“I see your point,” Wonshik burbles, and the cloud is gone, the water too, like it was never there. 

Taekwoon is laughing again, and Wonshik can’t believe how lucky he is to know he could hear this laughter for the rest of everything and all time. 

“What if I want to come immediately,” Taekwoon says, reaching for his own cock, giving it a single stroke before shuddering violently, crying out high and breathy, and collapsing forward onto Wonshik’s chest.

“There’s your answer, I suppose,” Wonshik replies, holding Taekwoon’s warm, shaky body to his chest and pressing kisses to the top of his head.

Taekwoon plants his palms on Wonshik’s chest and lifts himself back up, cock hard again, cute and pink between his soft pale thighs. 

“So, forever, huh?”

“Or we could chat about the weather,” Wonshik teases, grabbing Taekwoon’s hips and lifting them to rock them back down over him.

“We’ve got time,” Taekwoon gasps, breathless and laughing, leaning down to press his lips to Wonshik’s again and again and again, “so, so very much time.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
